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Book 



PRESENTED BY 



HOUSEHOLD ARTS AND SCHOOL 
LUNCHES 



THE SURVEY COMMITTEE OF THE 
CLEVELAND FOUNDATION 

Charles E. Adams, Chairman 

Thomas G. Fitzsimons 

Myrta L. Jones 

Bascom Little 

Victor W. Sincere 



Arthur D. Baldwin, Secretary 

James R. Garfield, Counsel 

Allen T. Burns, Director 



THE EDUCATION SURVEY 
Leonard P. Ayres, Director 



HOUSEHOLD 

ARTS AND SCHOOL 

LUNCHES 

BY 

ALICE C. BOUGHTON, A.M. 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF 

THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE 

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE 

FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 
1916 






aJ- 



01ft 
JUL 2Q 1916 



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FOREWORD 

This report on " Household Arts and School 
Lunches" is one of the 25 sections of the report 
of the Education Survey of Cleveland conducted 
by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland 
Foundation in 1915. Twenty-three of these sec- 
tions will be published as separate monographs. 
In addition there will be a larger volume giving a 
summary of the findings and recommendations 
relating to the regular work of the public schools, 
and a second similar volume giving the sum- 
mary of those sections relating to industrial 
education. Copies of all these publications may 
be obtained from the Cleveland Foundation. 
They may also be obtained from the Division 
of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, 
New York City. A complete list will be found 
in the back of this volume, together with 
prices. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 5 

List of Tables 10 

List of Illustrations 10 

CHAPTEK 

I. Household Arts in Elementary Schools 11 

Purpose of this report and method used 11 

Growth in the United States 12 

Growth in Cleveland 14 

Present instruction 15 

Centers 16 

Supervision 18 

The teaching body 19 

Teachers' salaries 22 

Attitude of principals toward household arts 23 

Attitude of Cleveland toward household arts 24 

Attitude of children 25 

Course of study 26 

Practical suggestions regarding the work 30 

Model housekeeping apartments 31 

Elementary industrial schools 35 

Summary 36 

II. Relation of Household Arts to Elementary 

Education 40 

Homemaking versus housekeeping 40 

Education for homemaking 43 

Function of household arts and its two aspects 48 

Selection of subject matter 50 

A housekeeping course in the junior high school 55 

Summary 58 



CHAPTEK PAGE 

III. Infant Hygiene 61 

Arguments for teaching infant hygiene in elemen- 
tary schools 63 
What the elementary school is doing 63 
Infant hygiene and the work it displaces 65 
Adult responsibility and the adolescent girl 66 
Time when specialized training should be given 68 
Hygiene for boys and girls alike 68 
Effectiveness of baby saving institutions 69 
Summary 71 

IV. Household Arts in Cleveland High Schools 74 

Space, physical equipment, and costs 75 

Course of study in technical schools 76 
West Technical lunchroom used for vocational 

work 82 

Trade work in foods and sanitation 85 

Courses of study in academic high schools 87 

Teaching body 89 

Present plan unsatisfactory 91 

Summary 94 

V. Relation op Household Arts to Secondary 

Education 98 

Education for self support 98 

Education for social relationships 102 

Education for individual personality 107 

Moral equivalents for home 110 

Summary 114 

VI. Elementary School Lunch Service 116 
Elementary school lunches from two points of 

view 118 

Present situation in Cleveland 120 
School meals as supplements or substitutes for 

home meals 122 

Kinds of lunches and by whom provided 124 

Lunchrooms and preparation of food 129 



VII. 



Food natural need of all children 


PAGE 

131 


School lunch or street lunch 


132 


Food clinics 


135 


Medical inspection cooperation desirable 


136 


Lunch service a big business 


136 


Consolidated lunch service 


138 


Summary 


139 


High School Lunch Service 


143 


School lunches not new in Cleveland 


145 


Two distinct policies with regard to school lunch 


service 


140 


Extent of service in Cleveland 


147 


Standards for high school meals 


148 


Lunch menus 


149 


Service 


151 


Location and equipment of lunchrooms 


153 


Condition and care 


155 


Lighting 


156 


Ventilation 


156 


Working force 


157 


Concessionnaires 


158 


Supervision 


159 


High school lunches a big business 


159 


Place of lunch service in the school system 


162 


School cooperation 


164 


Greater use of lunchrooms possible 


165 


Waste of present system 


166 


Economy of consolidated lunch service 


167 


Summary 


168 



LIST OF TABLES 

TABLE PAGE 

1. Cost to Cleveland Board of Education for two lunches 

a day for open air children 127 

2. Cost to Cleveland Board of Education for one hot dish 

at noon for blind children 128 

3. Cost to Cleveland Board of Education for noon meal 

for crippled children at Willson School 129 

4. What children in other cities spent at school in 1914- 

15 136 

5. Profit made by lunchroom concessionnaires in Cleve- 

land during 1914-15 158 

6. Average receipts per student for seven cities with 

supervised high school service, 1914-15 160 

7. Amount and cost of business done by Cleveland high 

school lunchrooms during 1914-15 161 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

A cooking center in a basement 16 

One of the several sewing centers in elementary schools 18 
New type of equipment in use in schools such as Eagle 

and Mound 32 

Open air lunch at the Eagle School 120 

Lunches for children, — the street kind versus the school 

kind 132 

Basement lunchroom at East Technical High School 144 

Household arts students at West Technical High School 

prepare and serve noon lunch 154 

The school lunchrooms must compete with the bakers' 

wagons throughout the city 158 

The new Allegheny High School lunchroom in Pittsburgh 164 
Scott High School lunchroom in Toledo 166 

In Allegheny High School in Pittsburgh 400 pupils are 

served in about six minutes 168 



HOUSEHOLD ARTS AND SCHOOL 
LUNCHES 

CHAPTER I 

HOUSEHOLD ARTS IN ELEMENTARY 
SCHOOLS 

This is the first separate report on household arts 
made by any school survey. In other surveys the 
subject has been reported in connection with the cur- 
riculum as a whole. For Cleveland, however, there 
are several reasons why an extensive study is both 
fitting and timely. 



Purpose of This Report and Method Used 
Cleveland was one of the first cities in the country 
to introduce household arts in its elementary schools, 
and at the present time all girls who finish the gram- 
mar school have such instruction during their last 
four years there. Rapid development in Cleveland 
has been closely paralleled by an increasing interest 
in household arts teaching throughout the country. 
This interest has been particularly noticeable in the 
past five years because of a growing tendency to con- 

11 



sider household arts for girls the equivalent of voca- 
tional education for boys. 

Cleveland's long experience should make possible 
a study of the aims, methods, and results of the sub- 
ject and a consideration of how far it has a distinctive 
contribution to make to elementary education, how 
flexible it is, and what are its tendencies and future 
possibilities. The purpose of this study is not to 
compare Cleveland with other cities, nor one Cleve- 
land school with another, but to picture the present 
situation and to describe work done ; to seek out mo- 
tives, and weigh purposes, methods, and results; to 
meet present and future needs by getting at existing 
situations and forecasting future developments. 

The first section of this report consists of the first 
two chapters. The first pictures household arts in 
Cleveland elementary schools and how people there 
consider it. The second deals with the purpose and 
function of household arts as it relates to the ele- 
mentary school. It outlines the scope of household 
arts and endeavors to select from the mass of material 
that which will further the fundamental purpose of 
the elementary school, to enable children to partici- 
pate in a great society. 



Growth in the United States 
The first impetus to household arts training was 
given in Boston, New York, and other eastern cities 
where cooking classes for ladies were organized in the 
early eighties. In the same decade philanthropic 

12 



classes in cooking and sewing were started in several 
cities which were merged into the first manual train- 
ing classes in cooking and sewing in both elementary 
and high schools. In the past 10 years this idea of 
manual training has given way to that of vocational 
training, and courses in household arts, which em- 
phasize the vocational nature of this work, are in- 
creasing in number. 

By 1875 the struggle for the higher education of 
women had been largely won, and trained women 
everywhere were beginning to realize the economic 
value of women's work in the household. Very 
naturally they wished to emphasize its dignity and 
importance to both home and society. They saw 
that one way to accomplish their purpose was to get 
academic recognition and professional standing for 
women's work, and during the early years of the 
movement their activities were mainly directed to- 
ward this end. 

In the United States the leaders were, among 
others, Maria Parloa, Ellen H. Richards, Mary H. 
Abel, and Dr. H. O. Atwater. Their earnest efforts 
gradually brought about a growing interest in house- 
hold economics throughout the country. Training 
schools for teachers of household arts and science 
began to be opened. In 1890 three normal schools 
were giving courses; in 1900, 12 were doing so, and 
by 1914 practically every state normal school in the 
country had such a department. Now colleges are be- 
ginning to give academic recognition to this branch. 
Finally, in 1909, the American Home Economics 

13 



Association was formed with the purpose, as given 
in the constitution, "of bringing together those in- 
terested in the bettering of conditions in the home, 
the school, the public institution, and the com- 
munity." 

Growth in Cleveland 
Household arts in Cleveland had a humble beginning. 
In 1884, through private initiative, a kitchen garden 
was opened in the basement of Unity Church, and 
cooking was taught to a small class of girls from the 
neighborhood. This first class was so successful that 
in 1886 the Cleveland Domestic Training Associa- 
tion was formed. It opened rooms at 79 Superior 
Street and the Board of Education gave permission 
for three classes of children from Rockwell School, 
located just around the corner, to go there for cook- 
ing lessons. The following year, 1887, the cooking 
department of the Cleveland Domestic Training As- 
sociation became a regular branch of the Cleveland 
Manual Training School, which had been opened in 
January of that same year. The school was started 
and largely supported by private initiative. It re- 
ceived state aid, in return for which free instruction 
was given to high school students. 

In 1893 the first grade centers in cooking were 
organized at Hicks and Outhwaite schools and new 
centers were opened year by year until at the present 
time there are 20 regular and seven special centers 
which accommodate the school population. 



14 



Present Instruction 
Girls who stay in school until they have finished the 
eighth grade receive four years' instruction in house- 
hold arts. They have sewing in the fifth and sixth 
grades and cooking and housewifery, including laun- 
dry work, in the seventh and eighth. With few ex- 
ceptions sewing is taught in the classroom by the 
grade teacher while the boys are having their weekly 
manual training lesson, but for cooking the majority 
of girls go to nearby domestic science centers. 

There are 20 such centers in Cleveland, each 
one of which is in charge of a trained teacher of 
household science. They are equipped to accommo- 
date not more than 24 to 26 children at a time, and 
handle on an average three classes a day. Girls have 
one 90 minute lesson a week, so that a center cares 
for 15 classes and approximately 300 children a week. 
Last year, (1914-15), 6,200 girls from the seventh and 
eighth grades attended these centers, while 8,200 
others from the fifth and sixth grades had sewing. 
The great majority of these were taught sewing in 
their own classrooms by regular grade teachers. 

At eight schools, including the two industrial 
schools, — Mound and Brownell, — the classes were 
taught by visiting teachers of household arts. In 
addition to the 20 cooking centers described, there 
are seven others : two in the industrial schools pro- 
viding for 156 children, two training classes for 
morons at Meyer and the Council Alliance Settle- 
ment where 76 are cared for, work for backward chil- 
dren at Longwood, and two model apartments at 

15 



Marion and Eagle schools handling together 223 
more. Girls who attend these schools spend more 
time on household arts than do those who go to 
regular centers. 

Centers 
Besides the 20 centers equipped for the regular 
classes in cooking and housekeeping, there are seven 
more planned especially to meet the needs of particu- 
lar groups of children. Centers are scattered widely 
over the city, and each one accommodates children 
from its own and nearby schools. 

In more than half of the schools household science 
centers are in the main school building; in the rest 
they share a small out-building with manual training 
classes. When these centers were opened, the method 
of bookkeeping was such that initial cost of equip- 
ment was not recorded. The estimated cost, how- 
ever, is $1,200 for kitchen equipment for each center, 
and $22 per year for renewed equipment, necessary 
repairs, and painting. With almost no exception the 
rooms are strikingly cheerful and well kept, and this 
is all the more impressive since a number are in base- 
ments partly below the street level. 

Schools as a whole are well cared for, quiet, and 
attractive ; the paint is fresh and the floors are clean. 
Household science rooms are light and airy; all of 
them have windows on two sides and a number have 
them on three. The visitor entering the room is 
immediately impressed with the constant care and 
thought put into keeping centers in such excellent 
shape. 

16 



The first of these centers was opened in 1893, the 
last in 1915, which results in a wide variety in fixed 
equipment and arrangement of rooms, but in spite of 
this teachers find little fault. A few prefer the old 
" hollow square" arrangement of desks to the new 
way, where groups of six work at a table desk, and 
do their cooking at family size gas ranges placed in 
the middle of the room. The teachers' main objec- 
tion to this plan seems to be that it makes more 
difficult the handling of small children, or those who 
do not speak English well. Cleveland has apparently 
not yet been stirred by the controversy now raging 
throughout the country as to which is better for 
teaching purposes, this older kitchen laboratory such 
as Cleveland uses most generally, or the newer 
model apartment such as those at Marion, Eagle, and 
Murray Hill. Advocates of the two methods advance 
strong arguments in favor of their respective posi- 
tions, and when groups of household arts teachers 
assemble in conference there is apt to be lively dis- 
cussion regarding the merits of the two plans. So far 
neither side has succeeded in converting the other, 
but in their attempts to do so they are producing, in 
the professional journals, an interesting literature on 
the subject that gives in detail the strong points of 
both methods. 

In the Mound and Brownell schools, and in several 
of the new schools, rooms are arranged for household 
arts. Equipment is simple, and consists of tables 
with locker drawers, sewing machines, and locker and 
display cases around the walls. Girls in these schools 
2 17 



have a special course of study and spend more time 
on sewing than do the other children who have their 
sewing lessons in the regular classrooms. 



Supervision 
The supervisor of household science and arts is an 
educational officer and is directly responsible to the 
superintendent of schools. She is appointed by 
the Board of Education on recommendation of the 
superintendent and this appointment is renewed 
each year. She prepares the course of study for both 
science and arts, holds teachers' meetings, and super- 
vises, through visits and individual classroom con- 
ferences, the work of special teachers in these sub- 
jects and the regular teachers in sewing. The super- 
visor in conference with and subject to the office of 
the director of schools selects equipment and plans 
the arrangement of household science and arts rooms 
in new centers and arranges for upkeep of rooms and 
equipment in older centers. 

Household arts extends through four years of the 
elementary school. This past year 8,200 girls had 
sewing with their regular teachers, and 6,200 others 
attended the household science centers. Of these, 
2,500 had a course in infant hygiene given jointly by 
the teachers and the school nurses. To handle the 
clerical work of the office, the supervisor has half the 
time of one clerk. This is inadequate, and the super- 
visor is, therefore, forced to spend a large amount of 
her time keeping up with routine clerical work to 

18 



the neglect of her heavy supervisory duties. At 
stated intervals she meets special teachers in con- 
ference, but grade teachers, for whose work in sewing 
she is likewise responsible, she sees only in hurried 
visits to their classrooms, in each of which she spends 
from 10 to 20 minutes each semester. In conse- 
quence of this there is danger that, as the depart- 
ment grows, she will cease to be a supervisor and be- 
come merely an inspector. Such a situation denotes 
an organic weakness. An adequate clerical force and 
the appointment of an assistant supervisor of work 
in clothing and textiles would go far to remedy the 
present condition which, if it continues, will in time 
sap the life and vitality of this department. 



The Teaching Body 
The household arts corps consists of a supervisor 
and 31 teachers, — 27 teaching cooking, the remaining 
four, sewing. These women make a distinctly favor- 
able showing in comparison with teachers of manual 
training and those in the regular grades. They are 
young and attractive; the majority are well under 
30, and all have had special training for their work. 
Indeed, this small group is rich in the variety of its 
preparation and points of view, for it represents 15 
different training schools for household arts teaching, 
and half of these institutions, such as Teachers Col- 
lege and Simmons College, are of college rank. 
Twenty-three of the girls have had work at those or 
similar institutions, the rest are graduates of normal 

19 



schools. In addition to their specialized work, 14 
have had experience as grade teachers. 

The very happy relationship between teachers and 
children which exists throughout the whole system 
is at once apparent on entering these classrooms. 
Teachers say they have to struggle to get the girls 
to be orderly with their work or particular in their 
dishwashing or prompt at class; never that they have 
difficulty in managing them. Principals are unani- 
mous in their praise of the way in which household 
arts teachers deal with the many problems involved 
in handling 300 young girls. There is, too, a very real 
loyalty to the department, and all unite in an effort 
to carry out the program as given them. 

The teachers are conscientious, and painstaking 
and want to teach the course as planned. Herein lies 
their greatest weakness. They are mainly concerned 
with methods involved in their teaching, but seldom, 
if ever, question reasons for teaching the particular 
material selected. This trait, however, is not pe- 
culiar to household arts teachers, but permeates the 
whole teaching profession, and is one of the chief 
difficulties against which supervisors have to contend. 

The majority of household arts teachers with 
whom the writer has come in contact, — and this 
applies not only to Cleveland, — seem to have little 
perspective with regard to their subject. If ever they 
do stop to question, they concern themselves with 
the hows rather than with the whats or whys of their 
work. For a subject like household arts, which draws 
its material from a broad field to meet the varied 

20 



needs of widely different groups, such an attitude on 
the part of its teachers is a serious handicap. Every 
individual teacher should be keenly aware of the 
many problems involved in a wise selection and pre- 
sentation of subject matter, and, if she is to do in- 
telligent as well as earnest work in her field, she must 
realize the situation as one to be faced by her as well 
as by her supervisor. Every teacher should have a 
distinct end in mind toward the fulfillment of which 
she is bending all effort, and a clear idea of tools and 
materials required to bring her plans to fruition. 
Instead of this there is blankness and misunder- 
standing when questions as to the general function 
and purpose of household arts are raised. The fol- 
lowing is a case in point. 

The lesson was on peanut cookies. The teacher 
was on the alert for any suggestions which would 
enable her to get those cookies into the oven five 
minutes sooner than usual. Conversation passed on 
to the question of why peanut cookies were being 
taught at this particular time. The answer came 
readily enough: " Peanut cookies occur in lesson 26 
in the regular course." "Well, then," said the per- 
severing visitor, "why are they in the course? Do 
they help illustrate some particular point you want 
to bring out? Are they especially easy, or are they 
valuable in themselves as being something which 
every girl should know how to make? Why do you 
think they were chosen rather than sugar cookies? 
But perhaps you have a fist from which to choose 
what seems to you most suitable for the particular 

21 



class you are teaching?" For a moment the teacher 
looked bewildered, then she brightened up and said, 
"You know we don't make the course, that is done 
by the supervisor, we just teach it." 

To the writer it seems as if more time should be 
spent by teachers of household arts in trying to find 
out specifically what their subject has to contribute 
to the girl's education, what its aims are, and in how 
far results obtained check up with the ends desired. 
Individual conferences between supervisor and 
teachers, together with departmental and committee 
work carrying responsibility, might go a long way to- 
wards arousing and fixing in the minds of teachers a 
critical attitude toward their work, but for teachers 
to go far in this constructive criticism requires a 
broader outlook and a more intensive social and 
economic preparation than the majority of them have 
had. Their training emphasized technique along the 
fines of natural science. This other viewpoint would 
place an equal if not a greater emphasis on social 
science. Such supplementary courses Cleveland 
teachers cannot get on the salaries they are now re- 
ceiving. 

Teachers' Salaries 
The schools have done well in getting picked teachers 
at bargain prices who, as a body, are as well prepared 
as any such group of equal size elsewhere. Teachers 
of household arts are regular teachers and are eligible 
for pensions on the same basis as other teachers. 
They have had, as a rule, a longer preparation for 

22 



their work than the average teacher of manual train- 
ing. They begin with $500 a year and in 10 years 
reach their maximum, $1,000, while the manual 
training teachers start with $900, and after six years 
get $1,500. Neither this initial $500 nor any amount 
between $500 and $750, which is what 20 out of 
these 31 teachers receive, is sufficient to allow them 
to support themselves and at the same time supple- 
ment their present training by extension courses or 
summer work. It is too low to hold permanently ex- 
perienced teachers, or very able ones. Moreover, 
household arts is a new and rapidly developing field. 
No teacher can expect to do good work without keep- 
ing in touch with its newer phases by attending con- 
ferences, at least once in two years, taking summer 
school work, or being a member of various educa- 
tional and scientific associations and subscribing to 
their periodicals. The teacher of household arts in 
Cleveland elementary schools can barely live on her 
salary; she has little margin for saving and none at 
all for development. 

Attitude of Principals Toward Household Arts 
Principals are uniformly interested in the subjects of 
clothing, textiles, and foods and sanitation. They 
favor the work and with few exceptions approve of 
the two years' course in both household arts and 
science. Some go even further and think this teach- 
ing should start sooner, — in the third or fourth year, 
— or have more time given to it in the upper grades. 
They favor it because they consider that it teaches 

23 



girls to be neat and clean of person and about the 
house, and that it gives them an interest in house- 
hold affairs, control over details of household man- 
agement, and some standards for judging the quality 
and importance of such work. 

Principals of schools with foreign populations say 
that through cooking and sewing the girls become ac- 
quainted with certain American ways and standards 
which reach their homes in no other way. Several of 
these principals said that it was a great help in keep- 
ing up attendance of girls near the legal age for work, 
and for this reason, if for no other, they would favor 
it, at least in the foreign and industrial districts. 

They felt, however, that since the subject was 
largely a technical one, their criticism was only of 
general interest. With few exceptions they were 
genuinely startled when asked if they considered that 
the reasons they had given for favoring the subject 
were sufficient to warrant its place in the crowded 
curriculum of the elementary school, or in how far 
they had been able to judge the results obtained by 
this teaching as compared with those of other special 
subjects. The principals grew much interested in this 
point of view; said they had never had occasion to 
consider the matter before, and thought that an at- 
tempt to do so would be well worth the effort. 

Attitude of Cleveland Toward Household 

Arts 

In general parents, club women, and social agencies 
are interested and favorable in their attitude toward 

24 



household arts teaching. Many parents are im- 
mensely " practical" about it. They say that it 
teaches girls to be more useful at home. In foreign 
districts the parents will sometimes let girls stay in 
school longer if they are getting something useful. 
Their feeling is that since the girls are destined to 
marry, it is better for them to be at home with their 
mothers or elsewhere at work than learning merely 
book knowledge at school. 

Unless the school gives something which helps the 
girl matrimonially, many parents concern themselves 
little, if any, about the girl's education. They are not 
troubled as to whether she likes the work or gets any- 
thing of value for herself from it. 



Attitude of Children 
Cooking is generally popular with girls. Sewing they 
do not like so well for it offers less variety and delayed 
returns. In cooking at least one or two new dishes 
are prepared each lesson, but it takes many lessons to 
make an apron or an undergarment. Then, too, the 
sewing is generally taught in the regular classrooms, 
and for cooking the children leave the room and fre- 
quently the building. So the cooking lesson is some- 
thing to look forward to. The rooms are different and 
attractive, the lesson, by its very nature, is much less 
formal than the routine work, and it is part of the 
game to eat the product of one's own hands. 

Certain immediate results of this teaching are 
noticeable. The children learn to do easy household 

25 



tasks, cook plain food, set the table and serve a meal, 
mend their clothes and make simple garments, but 
do not become adept at doing any one of them. 
They are encouraged to try at home the things they 
have learned to do at school, but there is no uni- 
formity about this home practice. Teachers empha- 
size it or not, according to how important they think 
it is, and how much opportunity for such practice 
neighborhood homes offer. 

The claim is not infrequently made that household 
arts has a marked effect on the girl's later life in that 
it teaches her to give thought to the care of her future 
home. Household arts should give the girl standards 
and does give her a certain technique in the handling 
of household problems, but that she carries over 
what she has learned from the grammar school to 
her own home, established perhaps 10 years later, is 
seriously open to question. Household arts is a com- 
paratively new subject. Its distinctive purpose has 
yet to be clearly defined and its usefulness measured. 



Course of Study 
The course of study for both household science and 
arts was being re-shaped when the Survey was in 
progress, and with the opening of school in Sep- 
tember, 1915, a new course went into effect. 

The old course in household science has already 
been abandoned, so it would be a waste of time to 
criticize it. The new one is only tentative and will 
be all year in the making. Any discussion of it, there- 

26 



fore, will have to be general and apply to point of 
view rather than to choice or handling of subject 
matter. 

In the past the approved method of making a 
course of study was to take from a well-stocked mind 
a neat collection of facts which could be arranged in 
orderly and logical sequence and so given to the child, 
such as the following: 

Lesson I 

A. Kitchen equipment 

Acquaint class with its use, place, and ar- 
rangement 

B. Measurements 

Use of salt and water 

C. Dishwashing 

Wash clean dishes from the closet 

D. Uniforms 

Kind and care 

Lesson II 

Five food principles 

a. Names 

b. Where they occur 

c. Use in body 

Beverages — coffee, tea, and lemonade 

Lesson III 
Starch 

a. Use in body 

b. Prepare 

1. Plain toast 

2. Buttered toast 

3. Water toast 

4. Milk toast 

5. Creamed toast 

27 



In such a fashion the old course went on its deadly 
way, for in their desire to be logical the makers over- 
looked the psychological. Apparently they forgot 
that the way they themselves learned to measure, 
cook, and wash dishes was by measuring, cooking, 
and washing dishes when there was a real reason for 
doing so, and some sort of a penalty involved in not 
doing the task well. 

The new course of study for Cleveland is very 
different from this older type. Its aim is frankly 
practical. Its emphasis is on teaching the girls how 
to buy and cook those staple foods which are the 
basis of the average American dietary. Meat is the 
first food studied, because it is far more important 
for a girl to know how to buy and handle meat than 
how to make tea and toast. 

When the class has learned how to handle simple 
foods and combine them in plain wholesome meals, 
and not until then, does theory begin to have a promi- 
nent place in the lessons. Children probably get as 
much theory as they got in the other course, but now 
it is introduced when they have some means for 
checking it up with the practices they know will 
work. There seems little room for doubt that this 
plan will be not only more interesting to the class, 
but more valuable as well. This new course of 
study involves the same outlay for materials as did 
the former one, — an average of two cents per child 
per lesson. 

A discussion of household arts and its relation to 
the garment trades is covered in other parts of the 

28 



Survey,* and so only a brief account of this work is 
given here. The household arts course is in even a 
more fluid condition than that in cooking. There are 
only four special teachers for this subject, and they 
divide their time among Brownell, Eagle, Fowler, 
Fullerton, Kennard, Mound, Warren, and Willson 
Cripple schools. Children at all other schools are 
taught by the grade teachers. 

In its present form the course which special 
teachers use is planned so as to include a certain 
amount of textile work as well as practice in handling 
materials. Children do various kinds of mending, 
make uniforms for use in cooking classes, and other 
simple machine and handmade garments, as well as 
fancy articles, — embroidered, knitted, or crocheted. 
Teachers stress the value and attractiveness of per- 
sonal neatness and endeavor to train girls to keep 
their clothes in good repair by encouraging them to 
bring mending of any sort to class. 

A simple course is planned for the grade teachers. 
They give almost no textile theory, nor machine or 
elaborate hand work, but confine themselves to 
mending, plain sewing, and buttonhole-making, and 
making very simple garments, such as aprons and 
caps for household science. 

So much for the subject matter of both kinds. 
There is still the whole question of emphasis. Where 
shall the emphasis be put, — on production or use? 
Shall all the girls be perfected in skilled ability to cook, 

* "The Garment Trades" and "Dressmaking and Milli- 
nery" by Edna Bryner. 

29 



sew, and sweep, or be given standards concerning 
cooking, sewing, sweeping, and the other technique 
of housekeeping? Which is more vital for them, to 
know how to make a good loaf of bread, or how to 
recognize good bread when they see it? The view- 
point of the present report is that general intelligent 
understanding is more important than detailed skill 
in accomplishment. The object of the work is to 
have the girls learn to know by doing. 



Practical Suggestions Regarding the Work 
Children are expected to wear a plain white apron 
with a bib, and an attractive little white cap in cook- 
ing class. They make them in the sixth grade as part 
of their household arts work so that every child who 
has had sewing is provided with her uniform when 
she starts household science. In all but a few of the 
classes visited, however, a number of children were 
without aprons and more without caps. This gave 
an untidy look to an otherwise very orderly and in- 
terested group. It is not easy to get children to 
remember their uniforms and keep them clean, but 
it can be done if teachers are sufficiently insistent 
about the matter. 

These uniforms are attractive, but they are im- 
practical. Colored aprons are much better than 
white ones for most kinds of household work. A 
simpler apron, in one piece, would be both easier to 
make and to launder, and just as effective as the one 
now used. As for the caps, they are attractive, but 

30 



they serve no other purpose. If uniforms are for the 
purpose of making household science attractive to 
children through an appeal to their instinct to dress 
up, those used do excellently, but if they are strictly 
practical in character, their useful characteristics 
should not be sacrificed to their esthetic qualities. 

Far more important than uniforms is the question 
of notebooks. Every child has a notebook in which 
she writes recipes, dictated directions, and spon- 
taneous notes. Besides being inaccurate, this is an 
extravagant way in which to spend 10 or 15 per cent 
of the 90 minutes per week given up to household 
arts. Printed lesson leaves distributed each week and 
fitted into an adjustable notebook are cheap, accu- 
rate, and in permanent form. They do not take the 
place of careful directions from the teacher, nor need 
they be ironclad as to order or usage. They serve, 
however, as a basis of departure for the teacher, and 
save her time and that of the class. For many years 
cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Buffalo have 
followed such a plan, and have found it highly satis- 
factory. It need not be costly, for technical school 
students, as in Philadelphia, can do the printing. 
Teachers admit that they could use those 10 to 15 
additional minutes to great advantage in review or 
other work. 



Model Housekeeping Apartments 
The two model housekeeping apartments are of 
special interest, for by their different arrangement 

31 



they mark off two distinct viewpoints which are 
causing a deal of heated discussion among edu- 
cators. 

The first of these apartments was opened at 
Marion School in a Russian Jewish district. The 
second floor of a two-story building across the way 
was turned into a model apartment. Walls were 
tinted, woodwork painted, floors and plumbing put 
in order, and the place equipped with furniture well 
within the means of neighborhood families. 

The plan for Eagle School and the new Murray 
Hill annex represents an entirely different viewpoint 
from Marion. These schools are also in congested 
districts, this time Italian, but pains have been 
taken to make these apartments, which are in the 
main buildings, as convenient in arrangement and 
fitting as are such suites in new and well-built 
apartment houses. 

In each case there is a definite reason for the plan 
followed. The group advocating the neighborhood 
apartment do so because they think that girls should 
be taught to make the best of conditions as they are, 
and that if they are given an elaborate equipment 
they will become discouraged and dissatisfied with 
the home situation and derive no benefit from the 
course. 

The other group take the opposite stand. They 
want girls to become intelligently dissatisfied with 
poor home conditions. They believe that such dis- 
content is a neighborhood leaven which makes for 
progress, and that the " slums" will never be done 

32 



away with until the people who now live there refuse 
to do so longer. 

The two groups are not so antagonistic as at first 
they seem. Both have a point to make and so far as 
they go both are right, but they stop short; they do 
not dig deep enough under method to uncover the 
real root of the matter, the end in view. The point 
and purpose of household arts does not lie in this or 
that way of doing things, but in enabling girls to gain 
control over the details of daily living. They should 
be rendered capable of making intelligent choice 
between different kinds of action. 

A man needs to have his shoes shined. There are 
two ways open : one to shine his own shoes, the other 
to pay the Italian on the street corner to do it for 
him. Again, the housewife's standards call for fre- 
quent changes of linen. There are just two ways for 
her to have it, either she can do her own washing, or 
pay some one to do it for her. In both cases the end 
to be obtained, — clean shoes, clean clothes, — is where 
the emphasis belongs. For the person who has not 
10 cents to spend for a shine, there is just one way 
to get it: do it himself, and it is for him to decide 
whether or not the shine is worth the effort. One 
time it may be, another time it may not. For the 
man with a dime, however, there is a choice. He can 
have a shine by spending his strength, or 10 cents, 
and if he is sensible he spends the one which at that 
moment is worth less to him. 

The same thing applies to the housewife who wants 
clean clothes. If she has a choice, she decides which is 
3 33 



worth less to her, money or strength. She then saves 
the one and spends the other. If she does not have 
a choice but still yearns for clean linen, she must 
wash it herself. 

When the school undertakes to teach girls house- 
hold management, it tries to present to them, clearly 
and forcefully, j ust this situation. For Euclid Avenue 
clean clothes and clean shoes present no problem. 
Murray Hill pays a good stiff price in manual labor 
for either one. 

The statement was made that the two viewpoints 
concerning model housekeeping apartments were not 
necessarily antagonistic, since their difference is one 
of method, not purpose. One side held that simple 
equipment, such as community homes afforded, 
should be used, the other the best possible tools for 
doing the work in hand. The solution lies in combina- 
tion. Emphasis belongs on understanding the job, and 
knowing about the tools that can be used. No girl 
should be allowed to burn oatmeal because she has 
no double boiler, nor iron a waist badly because she 
has to use an old-fashioned flatiron instead of an 
electric one. On the other hand it is her right as an 
individual and as a member of a progressive society 
to be shown the easiest possible way to do good work. 
The standard should be the objective one of good 
work; not the subjective one of good intentions. The 
model apartment should train girls to make the best 
of what they have, and at the same time show them 
how much more can be accomplished in less time 
with less effort when suitable tools are used. It is a 

34 



valuable adjunct to teaching domestic science and 
arts in the schools. 



Elementary Industrial Schools 
Brownell and Mound are handling their work in 
somewhat different fashion from other elementary 
schools. Brownell especially stresses industrial work 
for both boys and girls. It draws children 13 and 14 
years old from all over the city. Generally these 
children have done poor academic work and are sent 
to be given a chance in another direction. Frequently 
the change is what they need. They do well in 
handwork and show marked improvement in their 
studies. The course is a two year one and corresponds 
to the seventh and eighth years in other schools. 

Girls have both household science and arts the 
first year. The second year they specialize in one or 
the other, having a 90 minute lesson daily. This 
extra time girls spend not on theory, but on gaining 
skill and proficiency in organizing and handling the 
practical work. 

The school records show that a good many of the 
girls make immediate use of this training in wage- 
earning occupations. They go out as housemaids or 
nurses, dressmakers or milliners' assistants, or into 
large department stores where their textile work is of 
value. Their weekly wages vary greatly, but $5 per 
week is a fair starting point, with board for the girls 
who go out as housemaids. Follow-up records are 
new, but in the few available there are several in- 

35 



stances where girls earned $8 or $10 per week within 
two years after leaving school. 



Summary 
1. Field work for this report was begun in May, 1915, 
when visits were made to all cooking centers then in 
operation, and to special or regular classrooms while 
sewing lessons were in progress. When possible, each 
visit included a short conference with teachers and 
principals, and occasionally the visitor made an op- 
portunity to chat with the children. In conference 
with the supervisor of household arts, a study was 
made of what material was on record in the superin- 
tendent's office. Other persons in this office and that 
of the director of schools furnished or checked in- 
formation received elsewhere. 

2. This is the first separate report on household 
arts made by any school survey. Its purpose is to 
serve educational needs by studying present condi- 
tions and forecasting future developments. 

3. The first household arts and science classes 
were established in the United States in eastern cities 
in the early eighties. The movement spread rapidly; 
normal schools and colleges established special 
classes; and in 1909 the American Home Economics 
Association was formed. 

4. Household science courses in Cleveland date 
from 1884. In 1893 the first grade centers for cook- 
ing were established in the regular public schools. 

5. There are at present 20 regular and seven special 

36 



cooking centers in the public schools. Cooking is 
taught to all girls in the seventh and eighth years. 
Each center cares for approximately 300 children a 
week. The estimated cost of initial equipment is 
$1,200, with $22 a year for upkeep. The household 
science centers are cheerful and well kept. 

6. In older centers the hollow square arrangement 
of tables with single gas burners is used. In newer 
schools the small group of six children with one fam- 
ily-size gas range is more frequently found. Cleve- 
land for the most part has these kitchen laboratory 
centers but has placed model apartments in a few 
of the newer schools. 

7. Several schools have special rooms for household 
arts, with sewing machines, lockers, display cases, 
and other equipment. 

8. The supervisor of household arts is an educa- 
tional officer responsible to the superintendent of 
schools and appointed on his recommendation. She 
prepares the course of study; supervises the work of 
the special teachers of those subjects and the ele- 
mentary teachers in sewing; and selects equipment 
and plans arrangement of new centers. Clerical as- 
sistance is inadequate to handle the necessary routine 
clerical work of her office. As a consequence the 
supervisor is forced to neglect her supervisory duties 
for clerical work. 

9. The household arts corps consists of a super- 
visor, 27 cooking teachers, and four sewing teachers. 
They are well liked by principals and children, are in- 
terested, conscientious, painstaking, and well trained. 

37 



10. In the opinion of the writer, teachers of house- 
hold science in Cleveland fail to appreciate the wider 
aspects of their work. They are interested in methods 
but pay little attention to selection of subject matter, 
reasons, or results. 

11. Cleveland schools have secured well trained 
teachers at bargain prices. They have had on the 
average longer preparation for their work than have 
the manual training teachers, but their salaries begin 
at $500 per year with a maximum after 10 years of 
$1,000, while the manual training teachers begin at 
$900, with a maximum of $1,500. Twenty out of the 
31 household arts teachers receive $750 a year or less. 
This salary is seriously inadequate. 

12. The elementary school principals are uni- 
formly in favor of household arts teaching in the 
grades. In most cases they have paid little attention 
to the educational values aimed at, or the results 
actually achieved. 

13. A new course of study is now being used which 
will certainly be a decided improvement over that 
formerly used. Since it has not yet been tried in 
detail, it cannot be discussed at length. 

14. There are four special teachers of household 
arts dividing their time among eight schools. Their 
courses include textile, machine and hand sewing, 
and fancy work. A simpler course is given by the 
grade teachers. 

15. One-piece cooking aprons and caps which cover 
the hair would be more hygienic and could be made 
fully as attractive as those now in use. 

38 



16. Printed lesson leaves distributed at each lesson 
and kept in loose-leaf notebooks are preferable to 
the hand-written recipes and notes now in use. The 
present method is inaccurate and time consuming. 

17. There are two types of housekeeping apart- 
ments in Cleveland schools. One represents condi- 
tions commonly found in the neighborhood; the 
other has the equipment found in the best modern 
apartments. The apparent antagonism between 
these two methods is one of appearance only. The 
model apartments should train girls to make the best 
of what they have, and at the same time show them 
how much more can be accomplished in less time 
with less effort when suitable tools are used. The 
model apartment should arouse girls to strive for 
better conditions, and is a valuable adjunct to the 
teaching of domestic science and arts in the schools. 



39 



CHAPTER II 

RELATION OF HOUSEHOLD ARTS TO 
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 

The argument most commonly advanced in favor of 
household arts teaching in the elementary schools is 
that it trains girls to be good homemakers and house- 
keepers. The two are thought of as overlapping, 
intermingling, as being almost synonymous. Courses 
dealing with the subject matter of household arts are 
announced in different cities under names such as 
homemaking, home economics, household economy, 
household science, housewifery, household arts, and 
similar captions. In reality homemaking and house- 
keeping are different and distinct. 



Homemaking Versus Housekeeping 
Home! It means something different to each one; 
and at the same time it represents to each one, some- 
thing with which his most intimate and personal 
feelings are associated. The very word home en- 
genders emotion. "Woman, Home, Church/' — 
automatically feeling is substituted for thinking 
when they are under discussion. This is especially 
true when the argument seems to lead away from safe 

40 



and well beaten paths. Yet all this complex ma- 
terial which goes to make up a home, this intricate 
association of four walls and the fancies which vivify 
them, must be subjected to critical study and analysis 
before the school can do its part towards intelligently 
anticipating the needs of homes of the future in its 
training of the present generation. Such analysis is 
never entirely satisfactory, but it affords the one 
means at hand for separating out the parts of the 
problem which are tangible and concrete from those 
which are intangible and abstract. Home is a place 
where physical needs are considered and satisfied, 
and at the same time a place where physical well- 
being forms a basis for, and goes along with the 
expression and fulfillment of various social and 
personal tastes and aspirations. 

Housekeeping is a science, a business, a vocation, 
and is subject to objective rules and standards just 
as is any other business. Everyone can tell if a room 
has been swept and dusted; everyone knows the 
difference between well and poorly laundered linen; 
and everyone is fully conscious of the fact when soup 
is scorched or meat overdone. Poor work and poor 
management in the realm of housekeeping carry 
their own immediate penalties with them in the shape 
of a general family dissatisfaction. No one pays 
much attention when things go well, but the whole 
family is up in arms if a meal is spoiled in the cook- 
ing. This immediate resentment may be largely 
accounted for on the ground that everyone knows 
that there are right ways and wrong ways of doing 

41 



household work; that the tasks are tangible and can 
be learned, and that the person who blunders does 
so because of carelessness or faulty technique. 
"Carelessness and lack of skill are not passed by 
without comment in stenographer, salesman, soldier, 
surgeon, or scientist, so why should they be in a ser- 
vant or her mistress," is the undercurrent of feeling 
which family grumbling expresses. 

Housekeeping, as society is now organized, is 
woman's economic contribution to the family in- 
come; and her business share in the process of run- 
ning a household, just as wage earning is man's. 
She should have a professional attitude toward her 
work, but she should not be allowed to confuse her 
achievements as a housekeeper with her obligations as 
a homemaker, which are much more subtle and diffi- 
cult of accomplishment. 

In contrast with this business of housekeeping is 
homemaking. Homemaking is an art, an avocation, 
and a marginal activity. It is difficult to locate or 
define. One family home is made and bounded by 
cook stove and linen closet, back yard and Ford; 
while the next door neighbor finds it in books, music, 
friends, and out of doors. One man makes his home 
with places and things; the other with people and 
ideas. It is not a question of right and wrong, or of 
rules and objective standards as in housekeeping, 
but of human preferences in combinations unlimited. 
The range of materials with which housekeeping has 
to deal, — such as food, clothing, shelter, — is compara- 
tively simple as compared with the range involved 

42 



in homemaking. One takes into account physical 
necessities; the other emotional and intellectual ap- 
preciations and values. The first organizes things; 
while the second creates a feeling atmosphere accord- 
ing to the individual outlook upon life itself. The 
housekeeper is primarily concerned with quantities; 
the homemaker with qualities. The two functions 
are not identical. They are not even similar, and 
there is no absolute reason why a housekeeper should 
also be a homemaker or a homemaker a housekeeper. 
On the contrary there may be very good reason for 
separating the two functions and assigning them to 
persons who can perform one or the other admirably, 
but who cannot or prefer not to combine the two. 



Education for Homemaking 
A group of people may live together for years, they 
may even be united by ties of blood and association 
without making a home for themselves. Such a group 
constitutes a household or a family, but a home is 
something more. Although home has its foundations 
laid deep in propinquity and the commonplaces of 
daily life, on analysis its satisfying qualities seem to 
depend upon different factors, such as social organ- 
ization, use of marginal time, and their interaction 
one on the other. 

For thousands of years men have worked with 
tools, but not until 150 years ago did they find a sub- 
stitute for fingers. The Industrial Revolution insti- 
tuted a momentous change; it substituted a machine 

43 



for human fingers. Today one man and a machine 
can do the work hundreds of people used to do. Ma- 
chines have made two great contributions to the 
welfare of society; more goods and more free time; 
but this great boon of free time, to be enjoyed, must 
be organized for fruitful use. 

Society is just beginning to be on familiar terms 
with the strange new tendency of its members to be 
bored and get into mischief, that never cropped out 
to so alarming an extent until machinery set time 
free. If free time then, is not to become an evil, in- 
stead of a boon, some sort of fruitful activity must be 
devised to replace work which once kept all men busy. 
The remedy lies in cultivating individual personality 
and a discriminating sense of human values. This 
is a problem that today confronts progressive society, 
and both home and school must lend a hand in its 
solution. 

A long period of preparation is required to meet 
these new responsibilities. Marginal time can be 
transmuted into fruitful leisure only through a long- 
continued developing experience. To be effective 
this training must run through the whole curriculum, 
and every subject must contribute to it, since its 
strength lies not in a specific content, but in a habit 
of mind and a point of view. 

Formerly the activities of homemaking were in- 
extricably interwoven with those of housekeeping. 
Members of the family found their interests and op- 
portunities for self expression in the household work, 
neighborhood trades, and home crafts, all carried on 

44 



under the same roof. As industry became more and 
more specialized, fields of human interest and ac- 
tivity also became specialized. Instead of one long 
undifferentiated working day certain hours came to 
be set aside for vocational activity and certain others 
for leisure time. Society is beginning to assume the 
responsibility of securing for the individual an op- 
portunity for full self expression in his vocation; but 
society is far from realizing that full activity and self 
expression during leisure hours is of equal or perhaps 
greater importance. Members of the group are in- 
creasingly carrying on their vocational activities out- 
side the dwelling place. They are together only 
during marginal hours. The problem of homemaking 
is becoming, therefore, more and more a problem 
of the use of leisure time. 

Another great problem in education for home- 
making, — and it is closely related to the problem of 
^how to spend marginal time, — is that of locating, 
understanding and controlling forces that govern the 
behavior of people living together in society. 

The outstanding fact in modern civilization is 
man's control over nature. The whole organization 
of modern society is based upon it. The secret of 
man's control over natural forces is the scientific 
method. This method enabled patient workers to 
formulate principles which other men, incapable of 
so generalizing, could use without themselves repeat- 
ing the initial work. In consequence steam and elec- 
tricity became beasts of burden for society, but so- 
ciety must be on its guard or they in turn will master 

45 



it, so potent is their influence. Man has yet to work 
out a similar organization for the control of social 
forces. 

In any consideration of the home as a social insti- 
tution, the various characteristics of its individual 
members must be taken into account. Since the 
home like any other such organization rests on hu- 
man foundations, its final outcome must be de- 
termined by them. If home exists not as an end in 
itself, but as an instrument to further human happi- 
ness and social well-being, and if man is an alert, 
active, gregarious, and approval loving creature as 
we are coming to believe, then, home is wherever 
one is good company for himself and those about 
him. 

It is folly to talk of educating a sex or even an indi- 
vidual member of a group as the "homemaker" for 
that group; for homemaking, like thinking, to be of 
any value must be for every person therein concerned 
an active, not a passive process. A well kept house 
with slippers warm by the fire, a tempting meal, and 
the evening paper are important; but they are not 
the essentials in a home. The person in charge may 
clear the ground for and shape the general structure 
of the home, just as in Cleveland the architect-con- 
tractor prepares those miles on miles of little smoked- 
drab houses. But in spite of his good intentions and 
extensive advertising, he has built not homes, but 
dwellings. In a very real sense every man, every 
woman, and every child makes his or her home. This 
homemaking process is profoundly affected by a 

46 



broad range of human relationships and contacts 
with the outside world. In consequence the indi- 
viduality of a person's home is in direct proportion 
to the richness and variety of these outside influences. 

This does not imply that homes should lack heads. 
It means that heads should direct, not dominate 
group activities, and further that each member of the 
household should be given the opportunity according 
to his maturity, to participate or not, as he desires, 
in whatever leisure time activity concerns the group. 
Homes organized to this end offer society and the 
individual a liberal return for marginal time spent 
in its uses. 

Education for homemaking is needed by boys and 
girls alike, but homemaking cannot be taught as a 
school subject. The kind of a home one makes does 
not depend upon a particular set of facts about food, 
clothing, and shelter, organized into a course by the 
school. The satisfying qualities of home depend 
rather upon the ability of members of the household 
to cooperate in an enjoyable and harmonious use of 
their free time. The school can do much to further 
the development of such ability in every individual, 
but the school cannot accomplish it alone. This 
eliminates education for homemaking as a separate 
school problem and a distinct school subject; it 
should not be confused with the strictly technical 
courses called " homemaking" now offered by many 
departments of household arts. 



47 



Function of Household Arts and Its Two 
Aspects 

A gradually increasing control of natural resources 
up to the time of the Industrial Revolution of the 
eighteenth century, and an enormously accelerated 
rate of control since, is beginning to convince society 
that there is enough food, clothing, and shelter avail- 
able for every family, and every individual, to have 
more of them than a bare subsistence measure. In 
other words society is in process of formulating a 
progressive standard of living below which it is un- 
willing that any family or any individual shall fall. 
Household arts has a twofold contribution to make 
to the formulation and maintenance of such a pro- 
gressive social standard for right living. First it can 
give skill in doing any or all of the varied tasks con- 
nected with housekeeping. This division of house- 
hold arts can be handled with a fair degree of exact- 
ness. According to their needs housekeepers can 
secure training in the various skills required in their 
occupations, but this training is largely technical and 
is planned for those who are face to face with the 
problems of directing a household. The school should 
provide opportunity for such training for all who 
need it, but it is not the best kind of education for 
elementary school children. 

Such training is vocational in character and educa- 
tors are striving to put the emphasis on the prevoca- 
tional. At this period the main function of the school 
is not to give children a specific and immediate 
technical equipment for particular branches of in- 

48 



dustry, whether garment making without, or cooking 
within the house. Its purpose here is a more funda- 
mental and preparatory one; it is to stimulate chil- 
dren to become useful and valuable citizens of a 
democratic society through making them successful 
members of the societies of their childhood, — home 
and school. It happens, however, that particular 
groups of children must be wage earners or house- 
keepers as soon as they leave school, or even while 
they are attending. The needs of these groups should 
be considered, but those of the larger group should 
not be sacrificed to them. In the case of girls, it is 
the minority, not the majority, who have immediate 
and urgent use for technical training in housekeeping. 
Technical courses in housekeeping belong in the high 
school or in extension courses for adults. On the 
other hand in the elementary school emphasis should 
be put on phases of household arts which affect both 
boys and girls and which are of immediate, as well as 
of future, value to them personally, rather than as 
individuals responsible for the welfare of others. 

The second division of household arts deals with 
standards for right living and it is akin to health work 
in the schools. At this point there should be close 
cooperation with the health authorities. Sane habits 
of eating, sleeping, and living are just as vital to boys 
as to girls, and should be impressed on both by 
whatever department has this training in charge. All 
children should be taught what foods are good for 
them to eat and why, but during childhood only a 
very few need to know how to cook those same foods. 
4 49 



They all ought to have standards for judging quali- 
ties of various textiles, how warm they are, whether 
or not they absorb or shed water, what kinds are best 
suited for different purposes, and when a cheap grade 
will do just as well as an expensive one. 

In the elementary school increased emphasis should 
be put upon spending, rather than on producing and 
earning. All children should be taught first and fore- 
most to use and enjoy goods wisely, whether or not 
their later work will lie chiefly in the field of earning 
or spending, producing or consuming. They should 
be taught something of values, and educated to ques- 
tion the worth, actual and social, of things they de- 
sire. Household arts education here affords an op- 
portunity to create the beginning of an intelligent 
public opinion regarding child labor, the sweated 
trades, and other social and economic problems of 
an industrial democracy. 

Both aspects of household arts are important but 
the problem of the school is one of comparative 
values. One aspect of household arts aims at skill 
in doing; the other at judgment in using. The lat- 
ter is the more fundamental, and is universal in its 
application. The elementary school should center 
its activities on giving children standards for right 
living. 

Selection of Subject Matter 
The previous discussion would confine the main line 
of attack for household arts in the elementary school 
to problems directly involved in giving children 

50 



standards for right living. This necessitates search- 
ing study. Problems must be isolated and separately 
analyzed in a conscious effort to find out those which 
must be handled, wholly or in part, by the school 
because children do not get the needed control over 
them elsewhere, and those which may be omitted be- 
cause children have sufficiently close contact with 
them outside of school. 

Food, clothing, and shelter are fundamental human 
needs. When children are left to their own desires 
they build houses of packing boxes, in snow banks, 
or with two chairs and a shawl. Boys and girls play 
together at keeping house. Teachers should foster 
this interest which children bring to school and with 
it as a basis lead children on to knowledge and under- 
standing of why housing problems arise when large 
numbers of people live together in cities. This in- 
terest in human habitations runs through the school 
from kindergarten to college and may be made to 
link up with almost every other branch in the cur- 
riculum. 

The second human need is clothing. Children 
take clothes for granted, and while New York's East 
Side children know all too well that clothes are made 
from cloth, they have to be persuaded that cloth is 
made from wool which grows on sheep. This is 
natural enough. Children see clothing being made 
or mended all about them, but they do not see shear- 
ing, carding, spinning, or weaving, for the making 
of textiles in becoming a factory industry has ceased 
to be an affair of household moment. In conse- 

51 



quence, children's urgent needs in this department 
fall in the class of standards for using, not skill for 
producing. They should know how cloth is made, 
with the emphasis not on processes, but upon a 
" square deal" for and by the people who carry out 
those processes. Interest in this department of tex- 
tiles as in the department of housing, can be made 
important throughout the child's school life, by 
proper handling of other subjects. 

Sewing is generally begun in the kindergarten and 
from there on has a place in the hand work given 
there and in the lower grades. The general function 
of*such work during the first school years is to intro- 
duce children to processes which go on all about 
them, which ordinarily they do not or cannot learn 
at home. The reason for putting sewing as such in 
the elementary school is two-fold; to enable children 
to handle a needle with sufficient skill to do emer- 
gency work, like sewing on coat buttons, taking a 
tuck, or the like, and the subject matter should be 
chosen with this end in view, and to meet the needs 
of boys and girls alike. It may have a further value 
for girls in terms of recreation. This is particularly 
true in the case of knitting, crocheting, tatting, and 
embroidery. Sewing has, however, no value beyond 
the use which it serves. People learn to sew not be- 
cause sewing is a better form of activity than roller 
skating, but because at sometime or other everyone 
finds it a convenience to be on familiar terms with a 
needle. It is entirely conceivable that conditions will 
change within a short time and make sewing a refine- 

52 



ment that the elementary school, pushed for time as 
it is, cannot afford. The necessity for making one's 
own clothes, or even of mending them is rapidly 
becoming a matter not alone of individual preference 
but of economy. In the big cities there is an ever 
increasing group of women who rather enjoy sewing, 
but who cannot often afford to do it, for their time 
is too valuable to be spent in this way unless time 
so spent is counted against recreation and taken from 
their free margin. 

In the opinion of the writer a skillfully planned 
course in emergency and machine sewing, — one 90 
minute lesson per week, throughout the fifth or 
sixth year, — should give girls all the sewing they 
actually need, and the necessities of the boys are 
even more easily met. Such a course could be given 
by the regular teachers, but from an administrative, 
as well as teaching standpoint, it is better to have 
special teachers. 

The third and most important human need of all 
is that of foods. No effort is required to interest 
children in that department; such an interest is one 
of their most fundamental instincts. This depart- 
ment used to be conducted entirely by the housewife, 
and children acquired needful knowledge, skill, and 
standards of judgment through enforced participa- 
tion in every-day household activities. Today all 
this is changed. The divisions of brews and simples 
have gone to brewer and pharmacist and competition 
between them is too keen for the housewife ever to 
regain supremacy in this field. Gold Dust Twins and 

53 



Little Fairy have inherited a goodly share of another 
department, — household cleansers. Colgate and Men- 
nen are competing with Paris for toilet preparations. 
Armour does our butchering, and curing; Campbell 
makes our soups; and Heinz more kinds of preserves 
than the most enterprising colonial dame ever at- 
tempted. Mr. Hire and Mr. Welsh have taken soft 
drinks; Mr. Ward is after batters and doughs, — and 
the National Biscuit Company never ceases reiterat- 
ing that Uneeda Biscuit. The housewife retains a 
partial hold upon meats, vegetables, salads, and des- 
serts, — but even on these inroads are being made 
by far-sighted manufacturers via the delicatessen 
store. This momentous change is largely due to 
division of labor, specialization, and cooperation of 
modern industry. 

Lunch time in kindergarten affords the school its 
first opportunity for instruction in the use of food. 
If the teacher so wills it, milk and crackers soon dis- 
place the time-honored pretzel or bun, while an or- 
ganized lunch service can do good work along this 
line with children in the grades. In the course of 
their regular work children may learn a good deal 
about different foods, where and how they are grown, 
under what conditions they are marketed, and how 
it comes about that dates grown in Arabia can be 
sold in Cleveland for 10 cents a pound. 

Throughout the elementary school emphasis be- 
longs on use of foods rather than on the preparation. 
Cooking classes make a valuable contribution here, 
if the course is planned with this end in view. Chil- 

54 



dren as children have more use for knowledge of 
what constitutes a good loaf of bread than they have 
for knowledge of how to make bread. There is noth- 
ing inherently ethical connected with cooking as such. 
It may be valuable as a recreational activity; it 
may be but a means to an end, a service process, just 
as delivering groceries or typewriting letters are 
service processes. However, cooking is still an im- 
portant activity in the detail of daily life, and some 
acquaintance with the kitchen is a convenience even 
for children. 

For emergency purposes all children ought to know 
something of cooking as of sewing. They should be 
able to lay a fire and handle a stove, and prepare a 
simple meal which would involve for eggs, boiling; 
for meats, boiling and broiling; and for vegetables 
and cereals, boiling and roasting (potatoes). Girls 
enjoy such work, and boys will, too, if its practical 
out-of-door uses are enlarged upon. It is entirely 
conceivable, however, that the time will come when 
such a working knowledge of kitchen processes will 
cease to be a convenience and as it becomes a trade 
subject lose its right to a place in the curriculum of 
the elementary school. 



A Housekeeping Course in the Junior High 
School 

Elementary education is one kind of insurance that 
each generation takes out in behalf of the next. Its 
purpose is to teach all children those things that are 

55 



adult necessities and that they cannot learn by mere 
looking on or taking part. That is why society sup- 
ports schools at public expense, makes attendance 
universal and obligatory, and decrees that they shall 
teach such subjects as reading, writing, arithmetic, 
and the other similar studies of every elementary 
curriculum. 

The present discussion has indicated that house- 
hold arts, as commonly taught, only partly justifies 
its presence in the course of study when judged on 
this practical basis. If the common argument claim- 
ing that household arts trains girls to be successful 
homemakers were a valid one, this would eminently 
justify the inclusion of the study in the elementary 
course, for homemaking is an adult human necessity 
and it is not learned by mere contact and participa- 
tion. Unfortunately, as we have seen, it cannot be 
taught in a formal school course. 

Nevertheless there exist in such a city as Cleve- 
land certain potent reasons why it seems wise to 
include as a part of the education of all girls a brief 
course in practical housekeeping. In this city girls 
attend school up to the age of 16. Among every 10 
girls seven drop out of school in the seventh, eighth, 
or ninth grades. They are about 16 years of age. 
Under the Ohio law it is difficult for them to find 
employment in industrial establishments until they 
are 18 years of age. As a result most of them spend 
a year or two at home before going to work. At 
about the age of 18 a majority of them do go to work. 
Most of them enter some form of industrial employ- 

56 



merit and are wage-earners for three, four, or perhaps 
five years. Then the majority of them marry and 
set up housekeeping for themselves. Most of these 
girls are of foreign extraction and a large majority 
of them come from non-English speaking homes. The 
men they marry come from the same sorts of families, 
are engaged mainly in industrial work, and have an- 
nual incomes in the neighborhood of $1 ,000. Detailed 
data concerning all these points are to be found in 
the volumes of this Survey devoted to the problems 
of industrial education. 

As one phase of the social insurance that each gen- 
eration takes out in behalf of the nation it seems the 
part of wisdom for the public schools to organize a 
one-year housekeeping course for all girls designed 
especially to meet the needs of this majority that has 
been described. Such a course might well be a part 
of the work of the second year of the junior high 
school which corresponds to the present eighth grade. 
It should be practical and intensive in nature and 
endeavor to give the girls training in meeting the 
universal everyday problems of housekeeping. It 
should especially stress labor-saving methods and 
devices. 

Most of the girls would almost immediately put 
what they learned into practical application for the 
course would come at a time when the majority of 
them are able to spend a year or two at home. It 
would insure for all of them a degree of acquaintance 
with good housekeeping methods that should con- 
tribute toward the establishment of desirable stand- 

57 



ards in their own homes when they undertake their 
management a few years later. 

If these girls can be given a fundamental knowl- 
edge of those household processes with which most 
of them will be concerned, they will secure a certain 
amount of technical skill and, what is of far greater 
value, learn to know good work when they see it. 
They will become better citizens and potentially bet- 
ter housewives. They may even acquire that most 
insidious of all tastes, — a liking for the exhilaration 
which goes with good work. Society and the family 
gain thereby, but the chief gain is to the girl herself 
who learns to find happiness in work. 



Summary 
1. Housekeeping and homemaking are not synony- 
mous. They are separate in life and distinct in 
education. 

2. Housekeeping is a science, a business, and a 
vocation, and is subject to rules and standards just 
as objective as those of any other business. Home- 
making is an art, an avocation, and a marginal ac- 
tivity. It is not a matter of rules, but of human 
preferences in combinations unlimited. 

3. Housekeeping is woman's economic contribu- 
tion to the family income. Home depends upon such 
factors as social organization and use of marginal 
time. 

4. The invention of machinery has made two great 
contributions to mankind, — more goods and free 

58 



time. This free time to be enjoyed must be organ- 
ized for fruitful use. 

5. If free time is not to become an evil, fruitful 
activity must be devised to replace work which once 
kept all men busy. 

6. To function effectively in one's leisure time one 
must be educated for leisure. Provision of such 
education is one of the most important tasks of the 
public school. 

7. Homemaking must be an active process for 
every person therein concerned. The school can in 
large measure equip boys and girls to be home- 
makers; but this highly socialized education should 
not be confused with strictly technical vocational 
courses now offered by departments of household 
arts. 

8. Civilization may be measured by man's in- 
creasing control over nature. Society is now engaged 
in formulating a minimum standard of living. House- 
hold arts has a two-fold contribution to make. 

9. First it can give skill in doing household work. 
Such training is vocational in character. It is not 
the best kind of education for elementary school 
children. 

10. The second division of household arts enables 
people to form correct judgments regarding the use 
of food, clothing, and shelter as they relate to their 
daily life. This is the more important aspect of 
household arts for the elementary school. 

11. There is much available subject matter for 
household arts teaching in the elementary school. 

59 



The problem of the school is to select for its purposes 
that which children need but do not get elsewhere. 
12. The Survey recommends the establishment in 
the junior high schools of a one-year course for all 
girls. 



60 



CHAPTER III 

INFANT HYGIENE 

"Have you heard about the baby hygiene competi- 
tion? The nurses are giving a prize to the school girl 
who writes the best 500 word essay on the subject." 
Such, last May, was often the beginning of conversa- 
tions between teachers of food and sanitation and 
members of the Survey Staff. Questioning brought 
out the fact that a course in infant hygiene was being 
given for the second time in the city schools. The 
machinery was working smoothly and the course 
arousing much enthusiasm. To understand and ap- 
preciate this situation a brief review is necessary. 

The movement for the conservation of the child 
is nation-wide and has its roots back in the third 
quarter of the 19th century when kindergartners, 
mothers' circles, and teachers everywhere, began to 
study the child as an individual whose personality 
should be respected. At the close of the century 
scientific associations commenced to call attention 
to the physical needs of children. Ten years ago saw 
the inauguration of real medical inspection in the 
public schools. Today cities all over the country are 
taking care of the health of their school children. 

While these changes were taking place within the 
61 



school, momentous ones were going on outside. 
Under Roosevelt, conservation of national resources 
became a live political issue. Study of forests, coal, 
water power, land, cows, chickens, and pigs gradually 
brought the public at large to a realization that citi- 
zens too have an economic value, and that of all the 
nation's assets children are the most valuable. Na- 
tional and state child labor committees empha- 
sized this same idea. In 1912, after much agitation, 
the Federal Children's Bureau was started. This 
Bureau was conceived with the deliberate purpose of 
conserving the life and health of all children. For 
its slogan the Bureau chose "Baby Saving," for baby 
saving is the root of the whole situation and the best 
place of attack. 

The Cleveland Child Welfare Exhibit of 1913 laid 
particular emphasis on baby saving. Widespread 
enthusiasm was aroused throughout the city and 
various organizations especially interested in this 
problem, such as the Visiting Nurses' Association and 
the Babies' Dispensary, began a campaign with the 
direct result that in April, 1914, infant hygiene was 
introduced into the eighth grade of the elementary 
schools. 

The writer is keenly impressed with the necessity 
and far-reaching importance of child conservation, 
but she does raise certain questions with reference 
to the part which may properly be played by the ele- 
mentary school in actually carrying forward such a 
policy of public moment. Briefly stated, these ques- 
tions are as follows: First, does elementary school 

62 



teaching further this work to any such extent as its 
advocates believe? Second, does it duplicate or over- 
lap work which may well be carried by existing organ- 
izations such as milk stations and babies' dispen- 
saries? Third, does it offer in immediate value to the 
girl, or in a future value to her child, returns equal 
to or greater than those of the work which it dis- 
places? 

Arguments for Teaching Infant Hygiene in 
Elementary Schools 

The arguments which put infant hygiene into the 
schools are these : Thousands of babies die yearly for 
lack of proper care; mothers are too ignorant, too 
stupid, too careless, or too busy to learn how to care 
for the babies and frequently this care falls on an 
older sister. This older sister is at school and the 
school can teach her how to care for the baby. Such 
teaching will reach the baby, the home, the mother, 
and perhaps the neighbors. Moreover, it prepares the 
girl to care intelligently for her own baby later on. 
This last argument won the day. 

What the Elementary School is Doing 
Twenty-five hundred eighth grade girls are now hav- 
ing a regular course in infant hygiene. This course 
takes the place of eight weeks' carefully planned 
work in food and sanitation, four lessons being taught 
by the regular instructors in these subjects and four 
by the school nurses. The course is as follows: 

63 



1. Causes and prevention of the present high death 

rate and how to keep the baby well (taught 
by nurse). 

2. Milk: its composition, taught by making 

butter, cottage cheese, junket, custard (taught 
by teacher). 

3. Milk: modified, pasteurized, sterilized. Care 

of bottles (taught by teacher). 

4. Feeding: maternal, artificial. Importance of 

pure milk. Danger of so-called " Baby Foods " 
(taught by nurse). 

5. Clothing: discussion of the outfit and cutting 

of patterns (taught by teacher). 

6. First home treatment in the beginning of in- 

testinal disturbances (taught by nurse). 

7. Bed, bedding, sleep, airing, and handling 

(taught by teacher). 

8. Bath : the essentials of the bath and how much 

good it does the baby (taught by nurse). 

There is a general belief that this teaching costs very 
little. The nurses and household arts teachers give it. 
The rooms are at hand and in several of the centers 
bedrooms adjoin the kitchens. The additional equip- 
ment required, such as one baby outfit with blanket, 
bassinet, tub, and other necessary articles, cost but 
a few dollars. 

However, this course is not so inexpensive as at 
first it seems. School nurses give half of the course 
which means that while they are teaching the special 
teachers are idle, in the sense that this school time 
is not being used for teaching purposes. So the school 
pays for teaching time amounting to 536 periods of 
from 45 to 60 minutes each, for which it gets no 

64 



specific return. This loss is equivalent to more than 
half of the teaching time of one household arts 
teacher for one year. She teaches on an average 15 
periods of 90 minutes each for 36 weeks, or 530 of 
these longer periods for the year. When the nurses 
give infant hygiene, a like amount of time is being 
taken from their regular work. Moreover, while the 
girls are having cooking and boys manual training, 
their regular grade teacher is not teaching and a 
portion of this idle time should properly be charged 
up against infant hygiene. 

In addition to the actual money cost there is 
another factor to be considered: the work of the de- 
partment of medical inspection. The nurses are in- 
dispensable to this department and they are excep- 
tionally able and intelligent in carrying forward its 
policy and plans. Cleveland needs more nurses. 
Those she has are already overburdened with work 
and their own department cannot spare them from 
the regular routine for 134 periods per week for four 
weeks without being greatly handicapped thereby. 
It is open to serious question whether infant hygiene, 
which meets a real need on the part of a few children, 
approaches in importance the regular work of medi- 
cal inspection which renders valuable service to all. 



Infant Hygiene and the Work It Displaces 

In the seventh and eighth grades 90 minutes per 

week are allotted to foods and sanitation. The 

ground to be covered is extensive and most careful 

s 65 



manipulation is necessary to get everything into 36 
lessons. If the planning is well done the girls get 
from this course much knowledge of real and im- 
mediate value to them as individuals taking an 
active part in the life of home, of school, or of in- 
dustry. 

Infant hygiene displaces eight of these lessons or 
22 per cent of a year's work in foods and sanitation. 
To be sure, part of the theory given in the infant 
hygiene course is included in the other, but the major 
portion of this work is highly technical, and involves 
the actual details of the care of a baby in all the 
minutiae of its daily life. Moreover, that part of the 
course which deals with hygiene in its broader aspects 
is included in any well arranged work in foods and 
sanitation whether or not infant hygiene is given. 



Adult Responsibility and the Adolescent Girl 
Training in all the details connected with the care of 
a little baby may be necessary because home con- 
ditions are bad, just as training for wage-earning at 
the age of 14 may be necessary for like cause, but 
this situation should be honestly faced, with thought- 
ful consideration as to whether such training will 
eventually do away with the need for it or instead 
help fasten a bad economic condition upon society. 
It should never be forgotten that the carrying of 
full adult responsibility, whether it be a wage-earn- 
ing or a home responsibility, imposes an unfair bur- 
den on girls at a time when they are physically unfit 

66 



to carry it. In this connection a comment of one of 
the elementary school principals, who is located in 
an Italian neighborhood, furnishes a suggestion. 
The open air class and its population were under dis- 
cussion. The principal noticed that there were al- 
ways more girls than boys in the class. This condition 
she thought might be due in part to the fact that 
daily life for even the youngest girls was one of house- 
hold drudgery, but for boys it was a carefree, ball- 
playing existence. 

The care required by young children is of a highly 
specialized and technical kind. It is too difficult for 
young girls really to master, and the penalty for non- 
mastery has grave consequences for them, for the 
babies, and for society at large. Grammar school 
girls are adolescent girls, and they should no more be 
expected to carry full adult responsibility than they 
should be to do full adult work. Too great emphasis 
can hardly be made at this point. Adolescent chil- 
dren are in a peculiarly critical period of develop- 
ment, as we are beginning to realize. They are unde- 
veloped; they are immature; and they cannot be 
forced physically or mentally without serious conse- 
quences to themselves and society. At this age, girls 
especially are apt to be moody, introspective, and 
dreamy. What they most need is an objective, a 
tangible world, with emphasis on the kind of a place 
it is, how it is organized, and how they must be 
equipped to make headway in it. The majority will 
have to cope with the economic and social aspects 
of an industrial world for from five to 15 years before 

67 



they have homes of their own; some few will spend 
a life time in industry. 

Time When Specialized Training Should be 
Given 

Among the great numbers of foreign children in the 
Cleveland schools are many upon whom the burden 
of child care falls directly, but, before new subject 
matter for general consumption is introduced into 
the curriculum, the general needs of all children 
should be carefully considered. For the good of the 
babies and for the good of the girls infant hygiene 
should be taught only to those girls upon whom such 
burdens actually fall or are likely to fall within a very 
short period. The best time to teach people is when 
they have an actual need for the information and the 
technique of the subject. The majority of girls are 
not required to make all their own clothing or direct 
the affairs of a household. Their part is participa- 
tion in the activities around them. Training in spe- 
cific technique in any one of these activities, or in 
stenography or bookkeeping or typesetting, should be 
given when such need is imminent, whether that need 
be for the bathing of babies or the filing of bills, be- 
cause a technique is soon forgotten if not used and 
it is foolish to learn one for which there is little if 
any immediate need. 

Hygiene for Boys and Girls Alike 
Careful instruction and training in personal hygiene 
belongs in the elementary school curriculum, and it 

68 



should be given to boys and girls alike. Knowledge 
regarding community health should be flung so 
broadcast that the school child and the student, 
the stenographer and the scholar, the salesman and 
the soldier, in short, all society may recognize 
unhygienic conditions, and feel the obligation and 
urgency of doing something to remedy them. Per- 
sonal hygiene made so to function in the lives 
of children would be an enormous asset to them and 
to society. 

During their progress through the elementary 
school all children should learn something about the 
care of normal people, of exceptional people, old 
people, sick people, and babies, and that babies, 
especially, require delicate handling. They ought 
to know where such instruction can be secured and 
they ought to be impressed with the importance of 
having expert advice and assistance when responsi- 
ble for little babies. Such teaching might properly 
be planned by the school health authorities in coope- 
ration with the department of household arts, and it 
would make use of any and all material which might 
serve to develop in children habits of personal hy- 
giene. Boys and girls trained in the habit of respect- 
ing and caring for their own persons would not be 
likely, later on, to neglect their children. 

Effectiveness of Baby Saving Institutions 
Milk stations and babies' dispensaries are an out- 
growth of the past two decades, and, in general, con- 

69 



structive plans for baby saving on the part of hos- 
pitals and dispensaries are a still more recent de- 
velopment. 

The public is just awakening to the possibilities of 
an effective educational campaign on the part of 
these institutions whose work brings them in direct 
personal contact with mothers or other adults re- 
sponsible for the care of babies. Frequently this first 
contact is occasioned by the baby's illness, sometimes 
a serious one (an enforced system of birth registra- 
tion followed up by a visiting nurse might remedy 
this), but the contact between hospital and home is 
sometimes strengthened by the very urgency of the 
mother's need for instruction and guidance offered 
at a critical moment. 

These institutions are doing excellent work. 
Each year they win a firmer foothold in the com- 
munity and thereby open up further possibilities for 
usefulness. They are undertaking a new and difficult 
kind of educational program, and while their tech- 
nique is not yet perfect, it is already yielding aston- 
ishing results. Community responsibility for pro- 
viding the right kind of physical care for young chil- 
dren is one which these institutions may properly 
be expected to carry. They have recognized this op- 
portunity and are attempting to take advantage of 
it. Before assuming to carry this part of the burden 
of child care, the public school should make an earn- 
est effort to find out whether its services are espe- 
cially needed in this particular field. Such an inquiry 
might very well show that, given adequate support, 

70 



organizations already at work are better able to cope 
with the situation. 

Summary 
1. This report is based on classroom observations; 
on discussions with teachers and nurses; on like 
conferences with the supervisor of household arts, 
the director of medical inspection, and the head 
school nurse, as well as with other persons in Cleve- 
land and elsewhere, whose interests and work lie in 
the field of public health education. 

2. Infant hygiene is one of the important phases of 
the conservation movement. It has its roots in the 
early part of the 19th century, but was brought into 
prominence in 1912, by the creation at Washington 
of a Federal Children's Bureau. 

3. The 1913 Cleveland Child Welfare Exhibit 
focussed attention on baby saving. This resulted in 
a campaign by the Babies' Dispensary, the Visiting 
Nurses' Association, and like organizations. One 
year later infant hygiene was introduced into the 
public schools. In April, 1915, there were 2,500 
eighth grade girls receiving a regular eight lesson 
course in infant hygiene. 

4. The Survey asks the questions: Does ele- 
mentary school teaching further this work to the 
extent that its advocates believe? Does it duplicate 
work which may better be carried by existing organ- 
izations, such as milk stations and babies' dispen- 
saries? Does it offer either in an immediate value to 
the girl, or in a future value to her child, returns 

71 



equal to or greater than those of the work which it 
displaces? 

5. The arguments which put infant hygiene in the 
schools are briefly: 

1. Thousands of babies die every year because 

mothers do not take proper care of them. 

2. Girls at school can be taught how to care for 

babies. 

3. It costs little to give such a course. 

4. Teaching can be given by household arts 

teachers and school nurses who are already 
on the payroll. 

6. The costs of infant hygiene are two-fold: The 
money cost of teaching time and the loss of other 
work in foods and sanitation and medical inspection 
displaced by infant hygiene. 

7. Community responsibility for the right kind of 
physical care for young children has been recognized 
and assumed by baby saving institutions, such as 
milk stations and babies' dispensaries. Before as- 
suming this part of the burden of child care, the pub- 
lic school should make an effort to find if its services 
will be of especial value. 

8. The care required by young children is of a 
highly technical kind. It is too difficult for girls to 
master, and the penalty for non-mastery has grave 
consequences. Grammar school girls should no more 
be expected to carry full adult responsibility than 
they are to do full adult work. Therefore infant hy- 
giene should be taught only to those girls who must 
actually be responsible for the care of little babies. 

72 



9. In advocating that the teaching of infant hy- 
giene be limited to those girls who will make immedi- 
ate use of such training the writer wishes to urge the 
further extension of hygiene education, which should 
be taught to boys and girls alike. 

10. Such a course involves thoughtful planning 
and skilful teaching. If nurses are to help teach it 
they should be trained in effective methods of class- 
room instruction. Household arts teachers, on the 
other hand, need not only skill in teaching method, 
but a broad and suggestive background in public 
health matters. Hygiene, whether taught to all 
children or only a few, should be as well taught as 
any other subject in the curriculum. 

11. From time to time society is forced to make 
unfair demands upon individuals or classes in behalf 
of the group as a whole. Infant hygiene teaching in 
the elementary school is based on one of those de- 
mands. It is a kind of class education given to girls 
who are obliged to carry responsibility beyond their 
age, because mothers are too ignorant, too stupid, 
or too heavily burdened to care for their babies, or 
because mothers are dead and society shortsightedly 
sacrifices one child in the interests of another. Such 
a program is justifiable only as an emergency meas- 
ure, but it cannot be justified as a universal pro- 
gram of education. 



73 



CHAPTER IV 

HOUSEHOLD ARTS IN CLEVELAND HIGH 
SCHOOLS 

Cleveland is deservedly proud of its two technical 
high schools. In May, 1915, they housed nearly 
3,000 students or one-third of the city's public high 
school population. The remaining high school stu- 
dents were distributed among the six academic and 
two commercial schools. However, as most of the 
students of the technical high schools are boys, the 
girls constituted far less than one-third of the high 
school girls of the city. Their number was 880. 

A four year course in household arts was first 
organized at East Technical High School which was 
opened in 1908. Four years later, in 1912, West 
Technical High School was opened, and it likewise 
gave four years to this subject. In September, 1915, 
household arts was further extended by the intro- 
duction of a two year course into the academic high 
schools. The course is new and untried, and is being 
subjected to constant study and criticism by the 
school officers. In consequence this part of the report 
is confined to general rather than detailed discussion. 

Likewise in September, 1915, junior high schools 
were opened at Detroit and Empire schools. As yet 

74 



only the seventh and eighth grades have been in- 
cluded in the junior high schools. All the girls must 
take either one double period of household arts or 
elect a fuller five period course. As yet the house- 
hold arts work is comparable to that of the elemen- 
tary schools, but will expand with the addition of the 
third year and no doubt follow the high school lines. 
Night school work in domestic science was started 
at both technical schools when they were opened. 
This now consists of two terms a year of 10 weeks 
each. The usual night school fee of $5 is charged 
with a rebate of $3.50 if the pupil attends at least 
15 lessons. In one of the classes of 36 pupils, the 
following occupations were represented: 

9 stenographers 
5 teachers 
4 clerks 
4 dressmakers 
4 housewives 
3 bookkeepers 
3 tailoresses 
2 cigar makers 
1 milliner 
1 waitress 

Most of these pupils were young women who were 
making definite preparation for taking up household 
duties in their own homes. 

Space, Physical Equipment, and Costs 
There is a generous space allotment to household 
arts in the technical schools and the furnishings are 

75 



modern and in excellent repair. Classrooms are light 
and airy, and are provided with liberal closet and 
storage space. The rooms as a whole are not over- 
crowded with equipment and the work is so planned 
that classes average from 15 to 30 girls, depending 
upon the subject and how advanced the course is. 
Household arts is one of the original departments in 
the technical schools and costs for equipping class- 
rooms given over to it are included in the cost of 
buildings as a whole. 

In 1915 the Board of Education appropriated 
$18,000 for equipment (exclusive of necessary struc- 
tural changes) for household science rooms in the six 
academic schools. This equipment is very much the 
same as that at the technical schools and probably 
does not differ much in cost. Maintenance for these 
rooms is also charged against the general mainte- 
nance fund set aside for each building. 

Course of Study in Technical Schools 
Most of the girls who go to technical schools take 
their major course in either foods and sanitation, or 
clothing and textiles; a few take it in applied design. 
In addition to regular students there is a scattering 
of special students throughout the various depart- 
ments. The schools, in giving a four year course in 
household arts, have agreed in their threefold pur- 
pose "to teach all subjects pertaining to the care and 
duties of the home that girls may be prepared for 
practical homekeeping; to teach all theory relating 
to the above subject as applied science, that girls 

76 



may acquire mental development as well as prac- 
tical skill; to teach institutional cookery, kitchen 
management, sewing, and millinery as trade sub- 
jects, that students may use them for wage-earning 
occupations." They differ in details which are, how- 
ever, unimportant to this discussion. Time allotted 
to various subjects is indicated, in the main, by the 
schedule given below which is the one in operation 
at East Technical High School. 

COURSE OF STUDY FOR GIRLS 

First Year Periods 

per week, 

45 minutea 

Subject each 

English 5 

Mathematics 5 

Botany and physiology 5 

Cooking 6 

Sewing 4 

Applied arts 6 

Physical training 4 or 3 

Study 10 or 11 

Second Year 

English 5 

Mathematics 5 

Chemistry 6 

Cooking 4 

Sewing 6 

Applied arts 4 

Physical training 4 or 3 

Study 11 or 12 

Third Year 
Normal and college preparatory course 

English 5 

German 5 

Medieval and modern history 5 

Domestic science 4 

Domestic art 6 

Costume design 4 

77 



Non-college course Period, 

per weeks 

45 minutes 

Subject each 

English 5 

Medieval and modern history 5 

Physics . . . 5 

Domestic science 4 

Domestic art 6 

Costume design 4 

Trade course 

English 5 

Medieval and modern history 5 

Special technical 25 

Fourth Year 
Normal and college preparatory course 

History and civics 5 

German 5 

Physics 5 

Domestic science 4 

Domestic art 6 

Costume design 4 

Normal music 

Non-college course 

History and civics 5 

Science 5 

Elective academic 5 

Domestic science 4 

Domestic art , . 6 

Costume design 4 

Trade course 

History and civics 5 

Physics 5 

Special technical 25 

General topics considered at academic and tech- 
nical schools are alike, but the latter go into greater 
detail and make a conscious effort to correlate each 
year's work with academic subjects as shown by the 
following program: 

78 



FIRST YEAR WORK GIVEN IN OTHER SUBJECTS 
PERTAINING TO FOODS AND SANITATION 

Machine sewing — Hemming of dish cloths and 
towels; making of holders, aprons, and cases for 
silver. 

Applied art — Construction of envelope for clippings; 
construction and decoration of a notebook cover 
as a telephone pad; design for iron holder; design 
for a bag; design for towel decorations and house- 
hold linens; designing and selecting colors of mo- 
tives that may be applied to household. 

Botany — Cell structure; storage of food materials 
in seeds and underground stems; food materials in 
leaves and stalks; growth of molds and yeast 
plants. 

Physiology — Digestion of each food stuff; uses of 
foods in the body; personal hygiene. 

English — Subjects pertaining to domestic science 
used as themes. Spelling and pronunciation of 
culinary terms 

Arithmetic — Problems involving cost of foods; rela- 
tion of nutritive value to cost of food; relation of 
nutritive value to method of preparation; com- 
parison of one method of cookery with another as 
to economy of time and fuel; division of quantities 
used in the ordinary recipe that the student may 
appreciate the relation of the individual to the 
practical recipes. 

Data for these problems are obtained from ob- 
servations made in the kitchen laboratory. While 
skill is being acquired in preparing a food material 
in the school kitchen, valuable information con- 
cerning the same food is received from proposi- 
tions and solutions of mathematical problems. 
79 



In order to make this plan work, boys and girls are 
separated in classrooms as in shops and laboratories, 
with the result that while these schools are nominally 
co-educational, actually they house, under the one 
roof, separate boys' and girls' schools. 

Teaching follows the so-called laboratory method; 
that is, girls are required to keep careful notebooks 
in which they record their work as if it were a labor- 
atory experiment in chemistry. In addition they 
may copy recipes not in the textbooks and whatever 
miscellaneous notes they desire. Periodically these 
notebooks are collected and marked. Some few are 
excellently kept, but teachers admit that getting 
girls to keep their notes in order and up to date is 
one of the most wearing tasks they have. 

Throughout the entire course in foods and sanita- 
tion emphasis is put on practical aspects of the sub- 
ject. During the first two years students work in 
the laboratory kitchens, but in the third they begin 
to handle problems in connection with the house- 
keeping apartments fitted up in the schools. The 
girls do excellent work and seem thoroughly to enjoy 
whatever activities go on there. During the fourth 
year previous work is reviewed and enlarged upon, 
and the course as a whole " considers organizing, 
dividing, and systematizing work of the household 
and various economic problems of the home." Senior 
students in West Technical High School, and junior 
and senior students at East Technical High School 
who wish to may drop the regular course and spe- 
cialize either in foods and sanitation or in clothing 

80 



and textiles. At East Technical the course is on 
trade cookery; at West Technical on lunchroom 
management. 

The Cleveland technical high schools have as their 
immediate ends to prepare youths of both sexes for 
a definite vocation and for efficient industrial citi- 
zenship. The study seems to indicate that these 
schools do not give girls the kind of education that 
fits them for jobs that are open to them when they 
leave school. At the end of their course boys are in 
a different position, for their four years' time invest- 
ment represents a capital which almost immediately 
may be made to bring in on Saturday nights, 
about $6 regular income. For obvious reasons, such 
as going to college or undertaking technical work, 
not all boys seek positions immediately after gradu- 
ation, but it is probable that in case of necessity all 
could be self-supporting within a short time after 
leaving school. With girls apparantly a different 
condition exists. They do not respond as well, nor 
in such numbers as boys to the school's efforts to 
keep in touch with them after they leave, but what 
information is obtained, pieced out with what prin- 
cipals and teachers know about individuals and 
groups, throws a little light on the situation. 

Many girls plan to become teachers and go on to 
normal school or college; about an equal number 
take up some phase of secretarial or clerical work for 
which they obtain specific training after they leave 
school; a few go into commercial or business houses, 
such as millinery or dressmaking establishments, or 
6 81 



food departments of restaurants, or clothing depart- 
ments of stores, where their special equipment in 
household arts stands them in good stead and serves 
as a basis for promotion. A few more go into nursing 
or public health work of one kind or another and 
they, too, find that their course gives them an excel- 
lent background preparation for what they want to 
do, but, if the writer has correctly interpreted this 
situation on which meager statistical material is 
available, fully half of them stay at home. Many 
Cleveland parents whose children go to the city high 
schools do not seem to expect or want their daughters 
to enter wage-earning occupations away from home. 
Principals are cognizant of this attitude on the part 
of parents, which they say becomes especially notice- 
able when courses for vocational work or trade train- 
ing in any of its many forms are frankly announced 
as such. Boys demand such courses, girls and their 
parents have to be coaxed before girls will enter them, 
for many short-sighted parents still say with pride, 
"My girl will never need to work, I can support her 
until she gets married." 



West Technical Lunchroom Used for 
Vocational Work 

At West Technical High School a group of about 
15 senior girls is specializing in lunchroom manage- 
ment, with a schedule providing 25 periods per week 
for lunchroom and 15 for academic work. Their 
daily program is planned in advance so that when 

82 



they report each girl knows exactly what she has to 
do and whether she is to work alone or with others. 

The girls, under the direction of the concession- 
naire and one of the household arts teachers, do a 
large part of the cooking, including bread and pastry, 
take charge of storerooms and refrigerators, receive 
and issue supplies, oversee the arrangement of lunch- 
room and counters, and take charge there during the 
noon hour. In addition to the girls, two women on 
full time are regularly employed to prepare vegeta- 
bles, keep the kitchen in order, and do other odd 
jobs while several of the boys wash the dishes, wait 
at counter, and act as cashiers. 

Throughout the year the main emphasis is on 
cookery, and girls gain skill and reliability in food 
preparation; but since they have no direct part in 
buying supplies, planning menus, arranging the work- 
ing program, nor handling accounts, they do not 
acquire a sense of responsibility for the conduct of 
the work as a whole. They do whatever specific tasks 
are assigned and do them well, although in a leisurely 
manner; for nowhere are they impressed with the 
fact that their time is worth money, and that in any 
commercial lunchroom they would be expected to 
turn out not only as good a product as is required of 
them at school, but also a much greater output. 

Practical suggestions for developing and strength- 
ening this course might be obtained from a study of 
high school lunchrooms in Los Angeles, in Gary, or 
in other cities where students are intimately con- 
nected with the conduct of their school lunch service. 

83 



In Los Angeles the lunchrooms are controlled by the 
student body and they employ whatever assistants 
are necessary. They appoint a committee with full 
authority to direct the service for one month, to buy 
necessary supplies, to receive and disburse funds, and 
to do the accounting. These monthly committees 
vie with one another in an effort to give maximum 
satisfaction at minimum cost, and since ''getting in 
a hole" is an intolerable disgrace, finances are kept 
in healthy condition. 

Gary has a different plan. There lunchrooms are 
under the direction of the household arts depart- 
ments of the schools and are used by them for labor- 
atory purposes. Girls have an active and responsible 
share in buying supplies and in planning, preparing, 
and serving meals. Outside help is employed to pre- 
pare vegetables, wash dishes, and clean kitchens and 
storerooms. Keeping the lunchroom accounts is one 
of the practical bookkeeping problems which is han- 
dled by the students themselves. Los Angeles and 
Gary differ from each other and Cleveland, but, to a 
noteworthy degree, they succeed in doing something 
that Cleveland does not do. They put upon students 
responsibility for lunch service as a whole, while 
Cleveland, with her present course, only trains girls 
to be good cooks. 

A successful lunchroom director must be something 
more than a good cook. Lunchroom management, 
whether in school or out, is a business, a science, and 
an art. The science is being well taught, but of the 
business and of the art of running a lunchroom girls 

84 



are almost as ignorant at the end of the year as at 
the beginning. This is a fundamental weakness. The 
lunchroom training falls short of reaching its highest 
value because supervisors neglect or overlook these 
two essential factors. 



Trade Work in Foods and Sanitation 
At the East Technical High School the work for 
junior and senior girls who specialize in foods and 
sanitation is trade cooking and each year about 15 
take it. They spend five periods a day in classroom 
work in addition to whatever catering they do out- 
side. 

When they enter the class, girls have had two 
years regular work in the department and they are 
expected to use recipes intelligently and to assume 
responsibility for final products. There is no uni- 
formity of plan; the work is varied. One day the 
entire class is busy on a school " spread ;" another, 
two or three girls fill personal or class orders for cake, 
candy, or salad, while the rest of the class make sand- 
wiches for some bridge party. 

One of the most interesting and valuable features 
of the course is the accounting. Supplies for this are 
not included in the regular food supply budget for 
other classes. At stated times girls hand in their 
advance supply orders with estimated costs, and in- 
dividual members take turns in going to market and 
keeping the accounts. Each girl checks up the actual 
cost of her product and files with it a detailed memo- 

85 



randum of supplies used. At regular intervals what- 
ever profits are on hand are distributed among the 
class. During the year they may make $30 to $40 
apiece in this way and a few earn another $30 by 
work done outside of school such as serving at dinner 
parties or taking charge of small private dinners, and 
one or two have regular customers for whom they 
get dinner when the maid goes out. 

The class is popular. There are always more appli- 
cants than can be accommodated with the present 
equipment, and girls who enter do good work and 
progress, but there do not seem to be positions into 
which they can go when they finish the course. So 
far as a specific technique is concerned, this course 
equips girls for work, but other complicating and 
equally potent factors enter into the situation. Par- 
ents and teachers agree in wanting jobs to be socially 
desirable. For example, the week before commence- 
ment it is highly laudable for a girl to serve as wait- 
ress at a private dinner party; for her to do the same 
thing the week after commencement frequently en- 
tails a considerable loss of social prestige. Moreover, 
girls are not so free as boys to follow where work 
leads. This past summer there were a number of 
excellent positions open which the school did not 
attempt to fill because they were out of town. Fi- 
nally, the majority of positions which call for skill 
in food selection, preparation, and care, call also for 
a degree of maturity which 18-year-old girls do not 
possess. In consequence employers are unwilling to 
trust them with responsible positions, no matter how 

86 



good cooks they are. For these reasons among others, 
the writer considers that, strictly speaking, this 
course is not vocational. Moreover, if the situation 
has been correctly analyzed, changes in the course 
will not affect these conditions which have their roots 
deep in economic organizations and concomitant 
social prejudices. 

Although the course does not serve the purpose 
intended, it has a very real cultural value, and per- 
haps illustrates better than any other, modern meth- 
ods of teaching which are gaining favor in current 
educational thought. Girls in this class, more than 
in most other classes, begin to find themselves and 
to assume responsibility. The writer would advocate 
this type of teaching throughout the four years, and 
certainly its extension to include all regular fourth 
year students, for in her judgment the teaching 
method in this course in trade work in foods and 
sanitation represents the city's best teaching in 
household arts. 



Coueses of Study in Academic High Schools 
A two year course in household arts is being given 
this year for the first time in the six academic high 
schools and reaches 345 girls. This is primarily for 
first and second year girls, but junior or senior girls 
may elect the work. Next year, the second year of 
the course will have begun and the number of girls 
will probably increase. Seventy-two periods of 45 
minutes are allotted each of the two years to foods 

87 



and sanitation and to clothing and textiles, including 
millinery. 

While the Survey was in progress, the Board of 
Education authorized household arts in these schools 
and appropriated funds to cover cost of structural 
changes and equipment. Later several well trained 
elementary teachers of household arts were appointed 
to these positions. In July the director's office had 
arranged for necessary structural changes in the class- 
rooms and was buying equipment. But in August no 
information regarding this new course could be ob- 
tained from the superintendent's office beyond the 
fact that such a course was to be started when school 
opened and that classrooms would be ready. This 
subject was to occupy about one-sixth of the girls' 
time for two years. 

So far as the writer can ascertain, household arts 
was authorized by the Board of Education as a result 
of a general unanalyzed f eeling that since Cleveland is 
a city of homes, and girls are home-makers, household 
arts would teach them to be good home-makers. 
Money was appropriated to defray all necessary ex- 
penses, but apparently no policy was outlined regard- 
ing the nature and scope of this work; its specific 
contribution to the education of girls was not denned, 
and methods for achieving the desired result were 
left to chance. 

The general aim is "to develop a good mental and 
moral attitude and by connecting the work with out- 
side interests to make the pupils better citizens 
whether as wage-earners or home-makers." The 

88 



tentative course now being given covers topics such 
as: 

Foods and nutrition 

Sanitation 

Preparing and serving of foods 

Home nursing and care of infants 

Expenditure of income 

Laundry work 

House planning 

Household furnishing 

Household decorations 

Sewing 

Millinery 



Teaching Body 
The high school force in household arts numbers 26. 
Twelve of them, — six in foods and sanitation and six 
in clothing and textiles — are at East Technical High 
School, seven more at West Technical High School, — 
three in clothing and four in foods, — and the remain- 
ing seven are in charge of foods and sanitation and 
clothing in the academic high schools. These teach- 
ers have in a noticeable degree the ability to make 
their classrooms pleasant places in which to linger. 
Girls are having a good time working and the rela- 
tionship between teachers and students is one of 
mutual friendliness. 

In preparation for their work teachers vary widely 
among themselves. All have had the equivalent of 
a normal school course in household arts and 10 are 
college graduates. As a group they are better paid, 
better trained, and more progressive than elementary 

89 



teachers of household arts from whose ranks many 
of them have been promoted. On the other hand, the 
comparison between high school teachers of house- 
hold arts, as the writer has come in contact with them 
in Cleveland and elsewhere, and teachers of other 
high school subjects, such as literature, history, lan- 
guages, or mathematics, is not favorable to house- 
hold arts. 

In city high schools teachers of academic subjects 
are increasingly required to have at least one aca- 
demic degree, and in a number competition and prac- 
tice are forcing them to have more than one. This 
means that teachers in those subjects have in general 
a broad background behind their specific equipment 
which, as a class, teachers of household arts lack, 
and this is true even of those who are college gradu- 
ates. As a group they are highly trained in the tech- 
nology of their subject, but their major attention, 
whether at college or normal school, has been focused 
on the details of household processes without suffi- 
cient provision for socializing courses to offset this 
limited horizon. They are, however, as well paid as 
teachers of the academic subjects who have had 
broader, and often longer preparation for their work. 
In Cleveland their salary scale progresses in 18 years 
from $1,000 to $2,000. 

The Cleveland teachers are distinguished by their 
enthusiastic faith in household arts as being of vital 
importance in the education of every girl. They think 
of their subject as one which is not only expanding 
rapidly, but is also markedly increasing in public 

90 



favor. They want to keep abreast with it and sacri- 
fice their vacations for summer school work, but they 
do not go afield and are almost never found in courses 
in sociology, economics, or social and industrial his- 
tory. The courses they choose are in their own spe- 
cialty and most frequently are those which deal with 
highly technical phases of it. 

In the writer's opinion it is in this uncritical en- 
thusiasm that their greatest weakness lies. As is the 
case with elementary teachers, and in fact with the 
majority of teachers whether elementary or second- 
ary regardless of subject, their sense of proportion is 
undeveloped. They are in danger of putting the 
emphasis in the wrong place. They seem to think 
of their subject, not as one of many which contributes 
to the education of the girl, but as an end in itself 
into which girls must be fitted. In this respect 
school and society are as much at fault as individual 
teachers. 

Present Plan Unsatisfactory 
This is an unsatisfactory study. Through four inter- 
rogatory months the writer traveled, watching and 
questioning, from school to school all over the city. 
There were many activities to note by the way; they 
were interesting, efficiently conducted, and appar- 
ently satisfying to all who participated. Probing a 
little below the surface, however, seemed to indicate 
that these activities existed as things in themselves 
without fundamental relation to some common 
standard. There was no one person whose business it 

91 



was to be occupied with high school courses in house- 
hold arts, and their relation to the education of the 
girl as a complete person. No one seemed to be ques- 
tioning, with grim determination to get to the roots 
of the situation, where in the education of girls 
modern practice is based on formulated knowledge 
and where on feeling. 

Principals have very different but very tenacious 
ideas regarding what is "good for girls" and at pres- 
ent it is they, acting as individuals, who determine 
what kind of household arts shall be taught. Prin- 
cipals of the academic high schools made such a 
decision in September and several admitted with 
varying degrees of frankness that they knew little 
about suitable material for the proposed course. They 
seemed, to the writer, to be as unwilling to trust the 
making of courses to teachers recently assigned to 
high school positions, as to yield any of their jealously 
preserved authority to members of the superinten- 
dent's office. 

As a consequence of this situation, work was car- 
ried forward on the material equipment for the new 
classes in the academic high schools without any 
decisions having been reached as to the nature or 
definite purpose of the proposed courses and without 
any one being made responsible for formulating them, 
or even thinking about them. Finally, just before 
schools opened, the supervisor of the work in the 
elementary schools was asked to suggest what the 
courses ought to include. She was also asked to 
oversee the work temporarily although she was not 

92 



placed in responsible authority over it. The best 
results are not to be secured by such loose adminis- 
trative methods as these. Authority and respon- 
sibility must be definitely located in some person or 
persons. In this case no one of the persons concerned 
neglected his or her work; on the contrary, all were 
extremely interested and painstaking. The diffi- 
culty seems to lie deeper and elsewhere. 

Cleveland means well by its girls, but it seems to 
depend, for the solution of problems peculiar to their 
education, on tradition and generalized good inten- 
tions, rather than on trained intelligence. Appar- 
ently, as is the case with most cities, Cleveland has 
not believed that "activity without insight is an 
evil," and that insight is of necessity based upon 
factors other than general assumptions and pains- 
taking endeavor. Insight, in this sense of social 
vision, is not a matter of chance, but a result of criti- 
cal examination of existing conditions; of weighing 
and balancing one against another; and of a patient, 
persistent, painstaking, passionate determination, re- 
gardless of personal bias or social prejudice, to evalu- 
ate evidence on its own merits. 

Cleveland, in the opinion of the writer, has yet to 
realize that, in the education of girls, as of boys, 
activity without social vision is an evil too costly to 
be borne. This city has yet to delegate to some one 
person or group of persons, as their most important 
responsibility, the task of grappling with the highly 
complex congeries of problems involved in the gen- 
eral and vocational education of girls. 

93 



To bring order out of the existing educational 
chaos will require the best intelligence of the wisest 
leaders. The work itself must be directed by a per- 
son equipped not only with the specific technique of 
household arts, but also with wide experience and 
ripened judgment. Until Cleveland formulates a 
conscious and deliberate policy regarding the educa- 
tion of its girls, and provides for adequate supervision 
to insure its development and fulfillment, household 
arts, or any other kindred subject, in the writer's 
judgment, will continue to be unsatisfactory. 



Summary 
1. Field work for the report on household arts in 
secondary schools was done while the Survey was in 
progress. The writer visited both East and West 
Technical High Schools. Principals and teachers put 
at her disposal all printed material, such as school 
announcements or courses of study they had, and 
supplemented it by valuable comments and sugges- 
tions relating to problems involved in the education 
of girls. 

2. Generous space is allotted to household arts. 
Classes vary from 15 to 30 girls and average about 
24. Equipment is excellent and kept in good repair. 
Costs of equipment and maintenance cannot be 
given as they are included in funds set aside for in- 
dividual buildings. 

3. General topics considered at academic and 
technical schools are alike, but the latter schools go 

94 



into greater detail and make a conscious effort to 
correlate each year's work with academic subjects. 
The two technical high schools house 22 per cent of 
all high school girls. 

4. Teaching in the technical high schools follows 
the so-called laboratory method. Girls are required 
to keep notebooks in which they record work as 
they might a laboratory experiment in chemistry. 

5. The Cleveland technical high schools have as 
their immediate end "to prepare youths of both 
sexes for a definite vocation and for efficient indus- 
trial citizenship." This study seems to indicate that 
these schools do not give girls the kind of education 
that fits them for jobs open to them when they leave 
school. 

5. At West Technical High School about 15 senior 
students take major courses in lunchroom manage- 
ment. They do a large share of the work of the lunch- 
room, but they do not acquire a sense of responsibility 
for the conduct of the work as a whole. This course 
teaches well the science, but neglects the business 
and art of lunchroom management. A study of 
high school lunchrooms where students are inti- 
mately connected with the conduct of their lunch 
service, as in Los Angeles or Gary, should furnish 
valuable practical suggestions for developing and 
strengthening the course. 

6. At East Technical High School senior girls who 
specialize in foods and sanitation take trade order 
work in that subject. The class is popular. There 
are always more applicants than can be accommo- 

95 



dated, and girls who enter do good work and prog- 
ress, but available positions are not considered so- 
cially desirable by parents and teachers, or else they 
call, in addition to specific technique, for maturity 
which 18-year-old girls do not possess. 

Although the course does not serve the purpose 
intended, it has a very real cultural value. The 
writer would advocate this type of teaching through- 
out the four years, and certainly its extension to in- 
clude all regular fourth year students, for in her 
judgment, trade work in foods and sanitation repre- 
sents the city's best teaching in household arts. 

7. In September, 1915, a two years' course in 
household arts was organized for third and fourth 
year girls in the six academic schools. About one- 
sixth of the girl's school time for two years is allotted 
to this subject. Money was appropriated to defray 
necessary expenses, but apparently no policy was 
outlined regarding the nature and scope of this work. 

8. Junior high schools were opened a little later, 
in the fall of 1915, and those girls also are obliged to 
study household arts. This course is planned after 
that given in the elementary schools, but will prob- 
ably expand in the future. 

9. The high school force in household arts num- 
bers 26. In preparation for their work teachers vary 
widely among themselves. They are as well paid as 
teachers of the academic subjects. In Cleveland their 
salary scale progresses in 18 years from $1,000 to 
$2,000. Teachers are distinguished by their faith in 
household arts and their eagerness to make sacri- 

96 



fices for it. Emphasis should be laid upon the neces- 
sity for broader cultural background and more 
active staff discussion of the wider problems con- 
cerning the education of girls. 

10. At present there is no satisfactory form of 
supervision for household arts teaching in Cleve- 
land's secondary schools. This city has yet to dele- 
gate to some one person or group of persons, as their 
most important responsibility the task of grappling 
with the highly complex congeries of problems in- 
volved in the general and vocational education of 
girls. 



97 



CHAPTER V 

RELATION OF HOUSEHOLD ARTS TO 
SECONDARY EDUCATION 

Household arts justifies its right to a place in the 
curriculum in so far as it contributes to the ac- 
complishment of the purposes of secondary educa- 
tion. Important aims of secondary education are the 
promotion of economic independence, the under- 
standing of social institutions and their relative 
values in life, and the development of individual 
personality. 

Education for Self Support 
As yet the majority of women are not wage earners, 
but in every age an overwhelming number have been 
self supporting in a very real sense and in the process 
of earning their living have contributed to economic 
and social surplus in the added value goods gained 
through their labors. The majority always will be 
self supporting in that sense, but the industrial revo- 
lution, here as elsewhere, has made fundamental 
changes in the form their economic activities take 
and the conditions under which these activities 
must be conducted. 



More and more, women are having to earn a living 
outside the household. In the past household arts 
contributed mainly to their education for self sup- 
port. A problem now arising is : Can household arts 
contribute to their education for wage earning, and 
in so doing help to bridge the gulf between home and 
market place, between woman's world and man's; 
a gulf that must be bridged if the transition from 
one to the other is to be made without too great loss. 
An old saw tells us not to "swap horses in the middle 
of the stream." Women have come the far distance 
from primitive culture to modern civilization, not 
on the back of a winged steed, but on the plodding 
old gray horse of household work, driven by the in- 
exorable pressure of constant need. If properly 
directed, their old time work may continue to carry 
them safely into a new order. To make the transi- 
tion safely, however, some sort of plan must be de- 
vised which will enable women to function as effec- 
tively under the new system as under the old, and 
which will at the same time in return for their labor 
bring in a wage to take the place of board and lodging 
gained hitherto through household activities. 

For the first time on a large scale, industry, by 
encroaching upon the household has caused society 
to realize how manifold were the processes in which 
individual families engaged under the old regime. 
Division of labor has made possible the differentia- 
tion of these various techniques. Some of them, such 
as housekeeping, cooking, sewing, millinery, interior 
decorating, nursing, and child care, — apart from 

99 



motherhood, — are already distinct, while others, 
particularly in the broad field of spending, are be- 
ginning to emerge. Among the latter are purchasing 
activities of many sorts, including such occupations 
as shopping for persons out of town, and marketing 
for numerous families. Living on a budget involves 
another specific new task, — and, if desired, a visiting 
housekeeper, trained in accounting will lay out the 
budget, and plan so that food, clothing, shelter, 
health, recreation, and saving get their just and ap- 
proximately adequate shares of the family income. 

Household arts can organize the material for each 
of these separate occupations so that certain portions 
suitable to their ages and preparation are open to 
high school students with the definite expectation 
that they will use the knowledge so gained for wage- 
earning purposes in the period between leaving school 
and getting married. Until recently girls have not 
been wage earners during this period, but wherever 
the family was organized as an industrial unit, and 
in rural communities where it still is so organized, 
almost from babyhood girls have been self support- 
ing. At marriage they have simply transferred the 
scene of their labors from one household to another. 
At the present time many separate economic tech- 
niques have gone from the household; more are in 
process of going; and following them, as if in answer 
to the Pied Piper's call, surges an ever widening 
stream of women and girls who from time immemorial 
have had these techniques in charge. 

Wise provision for activities of girls during this 
100 



interim between leaving school and entering homes 
of their own has become a serious problem; for this 
period now occupies for many women almost a decade 
and a lifetime for increasing numbers. This problem 
which education now faces is becoming particularly 
serious in the busy industrial centers of Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, 
and Ohio. 

Even though feasible the solution of the problem 
does not lie in forcing girls out of industry into early 
marriage, for the cause of postponed marriage is 
economic inability rather than youthful unwilling- 
ness. Wherever work to any great extent leaves the 
household there comes a fundamental change in the 
relations of husband and wife; the wife ceases to be 
an economic asset and becomes a liability. Under 
the old system she earned her living and added to the 
family wealth ; under the new, the most she can do is 
to conserve the man's wealth after he gets it, so that 
increasingly unless the woman helps out by remain- 
ing at work a man cannot nowadays marry until he 
earns enough to " support' ' both his wife and himself. 

Through reorganization to meet the needs of a new 
economic system, household arts can aid in giving 
back to women much of the work they used to do. 
In this way it makes a contribution to the solution 
of two of the most important problems in the educa- 
tion of women. Primarily, it gives the girl a wage- 
earning technique which will support her until she 
marries; and in addition the same technique may be 
made to serve her in good stead after marriage either 

101 



as a wage earner or as the executive head of a house- 
hold. 

Many girls do not take these vocational household 
arts courses in high school since they plan to support 
themselves by some professional or commercial oc- 
cupation. On the basis that the time to teach people 
specialized skills is when they need it in their busi- 
ness, school should provide a wide variety of short 
courses in household arts for those who, if later they 
assume household duties of their own, wish to ac- 
quire added skill in their new occupation. 



Education for Social Relationships 
Boys and girls alike are born into certain social re- 
lationships and establish others. In the course of his 
life the man extends his field, stands out in the open, 
as it were, and becomes known to himself and others 
as a person and an individual. The woman, however, 
who climbs out" of the neutralizing background of 
family relationship is rare. For the boy, successful 
living necessitates a steady progress from boyhood 
to manhood; but for the girl it involves an unbroken 
passage from girlhood into wifehood and motherhood. 
From the cradle, society prepares girls for the great 
event of their lives, — marriage. School and college 
have constantly to face the charge that they are not 
" educating girls to be good wives and mothers." 
There is, however, no such apprehension concerning 
boys and their fitness to become husbands and 
fathers — in their case, society makes an imperious 
102 



demand that the school educate them for economic 
life. 

One is educated for marriage; the other for in- 
dustry. There seems to be a wide divergence in 
method and a difference in purpose, but in reality 
there has always been one common factor in the edu- 
cation of both. For women marriage has always 
meant more than wifehood or motherhood ; marriage 
has been woman's job and the institution which gave 
her the fullest opportunity to function as an economic 
member of society. Such being the case, it was al- 
most inevitable that the main emphasis in the girl's 
education should be put on marriage, and social 
pressure brought to bear on her that she marry at 
an early age. In such an economic situation the un- 
married woman was the only woman in the group 
with any chance ever to become a "social parasite." 

Most of our strong social institutions had their 
genesis in the routine of daily life, and are capable of 
modification by changes which occur in the economic 
activities of the community. The industrial revolu- 
tion made drastic changes in economic life: it sub- 
stituted power machines and the factory system for 
human fingers and household industries. There was 
no escaping the consequences of this absolute and 
entire overthrow of the kinds of economy to which 
man had become accustomed, and in accord with 
which he had shaped his social and intellectual habits 
from the dawn of history to less than 200 years ago. 
By pressure of circumstances society has been forced 
to change its methods of doing work, but it has 

103 



hardly begun the more difficult, serious, and complex 
task of adjusting its social institutions and habits 
of mind to the new world into which power machines 
have thrust it. 

One of these unforeseen consequences spells tragedy 
for women. Not only is power machinery taking 
more and more of their work, but it is also insistently 
calling for the adult members of the family, while the 
school is making an ever increasing demand for the 
children. Therefore, unless active measures are 
taken to prevent it, women who marry out of in- 
dustry eventually must face idle hands and homes 
barren of human companionship. This change af- 
fects all women, no matter what be their economic 
status or social position, but women of the upper 
middle class were the first group to become aware 
of what was happening. They early began to voice 
their discontent, but until very recently the only 
substitute that society provided or allowed for the 
richness and fullness of their former condition was 
charitable work of various kinds, or "culture," or 
social functions, — theaters and teas. The general 
unrest is now rapidly spreading and reaching down 
into the lives of women less fortunately circum- 
stanced. 

When Mr. Ford established a minimum wage of 
$5 per day for all adult men in his employ, he set 
forth his views regarding family life, and his belief 
in home as the place for women. Mr. Ford made his 
announcement in all sincerity, and there can be no 
question that the $5 per day exerted an enormous 
104 



power for good in the homes of many working men. 
It also partly brought about, and partly made ap- 
parent, a condition which Mr. Ford views with alarm. 

Within a short time after the $5 per day schedule 
went into effect, houses were better kept and the 
people in them better fed and clothed than ever be- 
fore, but some of the women were ambitious and de- 
cided that they could not only maintain this stand- 
ard, but better it if they too went out to work; so 
they got jobs in nearby factories. Thereupon, acting 
upon his profound belief that home is the place for 
women, Mr. Ford's sociological department allowed 
word to go abroad that in the future men whose wives 
worked in factories would receive a substantially 
smaller sum each week. When this economic com- 
pulsion seemed rather harsh, it was mitigated by al- 
lowing wives to teach music, but working in factories 
still had vital consequences for the weekly envelope. 
It is doubtful, however, if even this concession will 
long keep women in homes from which housework 
and children of school age have gone. 

Fortunately, the writer is not obliged to map out 
a program for the solution of the intricate human 
problems involved in preparing married women for 
the use of left-over time, but only to question whether 
household arts has a contribution to make. There 
seems to be at least one opportunity for household 
arts to be useful, but this is such that only mature 
women can profit by it. The successful running of 
cooperative public enterprises calls for new tech- 
niques. Public bath houses, recreation piers, com- 
105 



munity centers, playgrounds, school lunch service, 
food and sanitation service inspection, and the like, 
require skills that mature women, otherwise capable 
of performing the necessary duties of such positions, 
often lack, but which they could readily acquire. 
The school might properly extend its activities for 
their benefit and organize courses to equip them for 
work now available. 

Many of these positions have the further advan- 
tage of being only part time jobs, so that women can 
use their increasing margin of time to good advantage 
in them as well as do their necessary household work. 
The writer has had personal experience, extending 
over a number of years, with this kind of work and 
has found that married women do it admirably and 
that their sense of responsibility to their work does 
not impair that which they feel towards their house- 
holds. 

If the institution of marriage then is ceasing to 
afford full time occupation to women, the problem of 
educating them for varied social relations is present 
and serious. It is not possible of simple remedy, and 
it cannot be solved either by adding or subtracting 
household arts from the school program. Instead, 
the curriculum should be critically examined to in- 
sure that education gives girls as well as boys an in- 
creasing ability to form satisfying social relations of 
many kinds. 



106 



Education for Individual Personality 
Whether education shall place emphasis on indi- 
vidual initiative or upon social subordination is a 
question which confronts school and society. The 
answer has hitherto depended upon whether the 
education of boys or of girls was under considera- 
tion. For boys the emphasis has been on individual 
initiative; for girls on individual subordination. 

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, 
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief. 

He tells them over to find out which he will be; she 
to find out who he will be. 

Putting aside the questions of social justice, or 
the wisdom of emphasizing two such contrasting 
habits of thought in persons who must live together 
with satisfaction to both if marriage is to be success- 
ful, the query arises as to how this condition arose. 
No single explanation would be satisfactory, but the 
economic factor has, beyond doubt, bulked large. 

In the main men have had to earn a living under 
conditions which called for individual initiative, and 
those who pulled through were men who developed 
ability to go after what they wanted when once they 
had decided what they did want. Moreover, as 
society expanded and work became more highly 
specialized, they were forced, many times, to stand 
alone, without the backing of social groups other 
than those with which they had been able to form 
connections. In consequence, the family ceased to 
be the supreme factor. The chief traits that boys de- 
107 



veloped first were those that made for success in the 
world where they worked. Girls did likewise, but 
the two worlds were different and so were the habits 
formed. 

Women lived and worked within the boundaries 
of one institution, the home, and were obliged to con- 
form in thought and deed to tangible and intangible 
standards imposed upon them by the conditions of 
life there. They were expected to have, and those 
who survived did develop, the virtues of self control, 
self sacrifice, self denial, and finally if they attained, 
as did Griselda, to poets' fancy, — selflessness. Wo- 
men lived in and through and by some form or other 
of family relationship. Their success as women and 
wives was in direct proportion to the ready self 
effacement of any individual personality they might 
have inherited from their fathers. They were lost if 
separated from the family group, not so much be- 
cause of the laws of nature, as many people to this 
day insist, but more because of the effects of nurture, 
and the fact that the world outside of the household 
was man's world and truly foreign to them. It was a 
world in the making and running of which they had 
no responsible part and one where the rules of the 
game called for a technique of thought, word, and 
deed, different from any that they had been obliged 
to acquire. In fact it was diametrically opposed to 
the life they were obliged to lead. 

Whether we approve or not the barrier between the 
two worlds is fast breaking down, and women driving 
motor trucks or at work in munition factories are 
108 



wiping out many of its traces. Men and women now 
join in the common routine of daily tasks in the busi- 
ness world, but they have yet to establish a satis- 
factory human meeting ground. Men know their 
way about the work into which women have recently 
come, for it is the one that men have made for them- 
selves in the slow process of time, but women grope 
and stumble there. One great and present task for 
school and society is to enable women to pull them- 
selves from out the binding trammels of tradition that 
they may walk surefooted with their fellow beings. 

This is a most difficult undertaking. Women and 
home are bound up with the deepest feelings of the 
race, and because this is so there is a vast deal of 
sentimentality about the matter as well as sturdy 
sentiment. There is no other social institution more 
set about with taboos and inhibitions than the fam- 
ily, and the very nature of the girl's relation to the 
home makes it difficult to do other than substitute 
feeling for thinking in considering her educational 
needs. Therefore, a conscious and deliberate effort 
has to be made to get a social, impersonal, and ob- 
jective view on the situation. 

If girls are to stand side by side with their brothers 
in the world outside the home, they must become 
conscious of themselves as economic members of the 
community, not as transient intruders, but as people 
with a permanent and continuous interest in and con- 
nection with manifold economic activities. Further, 
they will need to understand and cultivate those 
qualities which contribute to success in such a world. 
109 



Summed up in briefest form, these qualities are the 
ability to regard a subject objectively and imper- 
sonally, and put it in its proper social setting. Girls 
need to realize that success depends upon accomplish- 
ment, not upon good intentions; and that to a large 
degree it is achieved through purposeful activity. 

Above and beyond all, girls should be educated to 
crave for and strive after intellectual honesty, that 
is, the habit of telling themselves the truth about 
all things and people, themselves included. This is 
a painful process, but truly exhilarating, for in 
some queer, miraculous fashion limitations faced 
cease to be limitations. Proudly borne these limita- 
tions may even blossom forth as assets, and in any 
case they permit one, knowing the worst, to accept 
it and turn thought and effort to other and more 
fruitful uses. Finally, if the girls are to be good citi- 
zens in this new world they should learn to pay in full 
measure for what they get, to be above accepting 
what they have not earned. To borrow their brother's 
phraseology, they must learn to "play the game." 

In the presence of such a problem household arts 
becomes but one of many factors, all of which should 
be organized to the conscious and deliberate end that 
through education girls as well as boys may gain 
the ability to substitute self control for home control. 



Moral Equivalents for Home 
Home has been one of the dynamic factors of civiliza- 
tion. It was the place where people of different kinds 
110 



and ages, both sexes and different interests, held to- 
gether by kinship and the common necessity of earn- 
ing a living, first came to have an affectionate knowl- 
edge of each other, and tolerance of others, and 
eventually to work out a method of living, working, 
and playing together that came to be both harmoni- 
ous and efficient. Lessons learned at home were not 
taken from a course of study designed to discipline 
students' minds, but were real problems imposed 
upon individuals by group necessities, and the pen- 
alty for not solving them was rarely postponed and 
was paid by the family as well as the individual di- 
rectly responsible. The shifting of work from home 
to factory gave a death blow to the importance of 
many subjects in the home curriculum. It also made 
apparent for the first time how undifferentiated this 
course of study had been. 

The business of even an average household in that 
older time was so intricate and many-sided that from 
dawn to dusk children and grown-ups were kept busy 
with tasks suited, in the main, to their various tastes 
and abilities. In addition work was done in a fa- 
miliar place in company with members of one's own 
family and was so organized that there was time for 
rest and recreation for all members of the household 
at odd moments throughout the day. This meant 
that under the old regime people could lead approxi- 
mately full and rounded lives within household 
boundaries, for work and rest and play were all pro- 
vided for within the system. Such is no longer the 
case. 

Ill 



The world outside the household now affords as 
great, if not greater, opportunities for full and 
rounded living. To live fully and freely in the out- 
side world, however, necessitates kinds of education, 
social adjustment, and individual self consciousness 
not required by the undifferentiated manner of life 
when each family was much more nearly a self suffi- 
cient economic unit. Work in office and factory now 
takes from the heart of the day solid blocks of time 
once given over to a wide range of household activi- 
ties. Moreover, as great fields of work and numbers 
of people were lost to the household, the necessity of 
adequately providing for play activities becomes 
more apparent and serious. Gradually recreation 
outside the household, whether intellectual, emo- 
tional, or esthetic, came to occupy time after working 
hours, and on holidays and Sundays. The enormous 
popularity of " commercialized" recreations of an 
onlooking type suggests that at present the majority 
of people in cities are either too tired when night 
comes or too untrained to initiate pleasant ways of 
spending leisure time. Society is realizing this de- 
ficiency and beginning to take measures to over- 
come it, as witness the wider use of the school plant, 
public recreation parks and piers, and community 
centers standing side by side with commercialized 
recreation. 

The most important element of home is the feeling 
atmosphere engendered by people working or playing 
together with harmonious and efficient unity of pur- 
pose. Hitherto in our thinking this feeling has been 

112 



associated with the family group at work within the 
confines of the house; we have yet consciously to 
realize that it is this feeling atmosphere which is the 
vital and dynamic thing, not the house which once 
confined it. Household organization has changed and 
single groups cannot long continue to provide it 
unaided, for it is a living atmosphere which people 
make wherever and whenever they establish satis- 
factory human relationship, whether those relation- 
ships be within or without their immediate families. 
To keep women in houses now largely void of life's 
realities is to defeat the very purpose of those who are 
most insistent on home as the place for women. 
Home is the place for women, and men and children 
likewise, but it is not confined to any one particular 
place set off by a gatepost or chimney corner. Wo- 
men have always contributed largely to the creation 
of the home feeling, and will continue to contribute 
in proportion as they realize that life is flowing 
through new channels different from any before, 
and that it is life that matters, not the frame which 
once held it, nor future forms which it may take. 
Women have already begun to learn this truth. 
People who temper the wind to shorn families are 
many of them women. They are called visiting 
nurses, visiting housekeepers, and social workers, 
but they are just women doing what women have 
done from time immemorial, trying to make others 
comfortable. Household arts will become a social 
science when it provides for these women, striving to 
carry on their ancient tasks, techniques developed 
8 113 



for the purpose of serving human needs of people 
living together in society. 



Summary 
1. Household arts justifies its place in the curric- 
ulum in so far as it contributes to the accomplish- 
ment of the purposes of secondary education. Im- 
portant ones among them are the promotion of eco- 
nomic independence, an understanding of social in- 
stitutions, and the development of individual per- 
sonality. 

2. The majority of women are not wage-earners, 
but an overwhelming number have always been self- 
supporting. The majority always will be self-sup- 
porting, but under modern conditions their economic 
activities take on new forms. 

3. Household arts has always contributed to edu- 
cation for self-support. It can now contribute to 
education for wage-earning. 

4. Many girls do not take these vocational courses 
in household arts. The school should provide short 
courses in household arts for those who at some later 
time may wish such instruction. 

5. Marriage has always been a full-time job for 
women. Much of the married woman's work has 
left the household and new work is not taking its 
place. Household arts can help her to use her free 
time to good advantage in part-time community 
work. 

6. Women have lived and worked within the 

114 



boundaries of one institution, the home. The bar- 
riers between the world within and the world with- 
out her home are breaking down. Education for 
girls as for boys should emphasize self control rather 
than home control. Household arts is but one of 
many contributing factors to such an end. 

7. To keep women in homes prevents their getting 
the wider social contacts which they need in the 
modern world. As visiting nurses, visiting house- 
keepers, and social workers generally they get an 
understanding of these broader social relationships. 
Household arts can help develop the required skills. 



115 



CHAPTER VI 

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LUNCH SERVICE 

Food is a natural need of all children. They cannot 
get it at home in the middle of the morning, for com- 
pulsory attendance puts them in school; and many 
cannot get a hot meal at home at dinner time because 
their mothers are away at work in the factory. The 
school did not make these conditions, but it recog- 
nizes them and purposes meeting them through the 
school lunch. At recess such service provides lunch 
for all hungry children who want to spend their pen- 
nies for milk, cocoa, graham crackers, " jelly bread," 
a bit of sweet chocolate, or an apple; and at noon 
there is an appetizing meal under wholesome condi- 
tions for children whose elders are at work. 

Such a division, however, does a good deal more 
than feed children. It offers large opportunity to 
teach them essential facts about food and its uses. 
Through the children this very practical knowledge 
gets back to the mothers. That this influence is of 
real and immediate value is well illustrated in the 
case of foreign mothers. They were admirable man- 
agers in the old country, but in the United States 
everything is new and the language strange, so that 
they cannot talk to the people who could tell them 

116 



why everything here is so different. One of their 
great chances to learn is through the children who 
talk at home about what they had to eat at school, 
how good it was, and how much they got for a penny. 
Italian children at the Murray Hill School are asking 
their mothers for milk and dishes like those they get 
at school. Doctors say that it is not so difficult as it 
used to be to get people to take milk when they pre- 
scribe it. In Philadelphia, mothers come to the lunch 
counter asking how to cook rice the way the children 
get it there and wanting to buy what is left over at 
the end of the day. In New York they go to the 
school asking to buy their lunch too, and every day 
sees a few mothers eating lunch with the children. 

Reliable dealers want school lunch trade. Milk- 
men take great pains to give good service as well as 
good milk and before very long all children know the 
name and brand of milk served. They know the 
names and prices of various crackers, too, and who 
makes them, and they ask for their favorite kinds. 
Naturally, tastes formed at school carry back and 
gradually begin to affect the daily market order. 

The need to choose carefully, use well, and spend 
wisely applies to all children, girls and boys alike. 
To a great extent the health and comfort of the family 
will depend on how well women spend the common 
earnings. Men, whether or not they carry a dinner 
pail, use restaurants and ought to have sane stand- 
ards on which to base their orders. 

Both girls and boys make economic adjustments 
long before they know the meaning of the term. 
117 



Participation in a real business which they them- 
selves support may teach them to discriminate; to 
take into account various items of overhead charge, 
raw materials, service, and interest, which enter into 
the selling price of every article they buy. It may 
give them a working knowledge of business principles 
and ethics and a little appreciation of the extent to 
which their success outside of school will depend on 
their ability to use cooperatively the collective efforts 
of others. 

A far-sighted lunch department will try to bring 
about this condition, in other words to become, for 
all its patrons, a practice school in spending. So far 
little has been done along this line in the elementary 
schools, but in certain high schools, notably those 
in Los Angeles, such a plan has met with marked 
success. 

The school lunch division takes thought also for 
the food needs of exceptional children as well as 
average children, and through food dispensaries can 
provide machinery for their adequate care at a mini- 
mum cost to the public. 



Elementary School Lunches from Two 
Points of View 

There are two separate and distinct viewpoints with 
regard to elementary school feeding. The one regards 
this service as being primarily charitable in character, 
and to be handled by the school on that basis only. 
It looks upon the elementary service as a real but 

118 



regrettable necessity imposed upon the authorities by 
the practical problem of providing food for excep- 
tional children whose parents are too poor or too 
ignorant to do it for them. 

The other group considers school feeding essen- 
tially social in character, in that it recognizes a natu- 
ral need of all children, rich and poor, well and under- 
nourished, alike. It considers the service a proper 
function of the school because it utilizes a child's 
natural appetite to teach him for what kind of food 
to spend his money and how to apportion it. It fur- 
ther realizes that in creating a department to serve 
all children, the school has at hand without further 
expense all necessary machinery for caring for the 
undernourished child in whatever way his special 
needs may demand. 

Elementary lunch service in Cleveland is of the 
first kind. It was organized six years ago by the 
Philanthropy Committee of the Women's Federation 
of Clubs "to provide breakfasts for anaemic and 
undernourished children" at a school in a very poor 
and greatly congested section of the city. Today the 
Committee's purpose is the same as it was six years 
ago, — provision for the exceptional child. Its active 
interest has never been extended to a consideration 
of the normal child and his needs, although to both 
school and society he is far and away the more im- 
portant. 

The school board is in a somewhat different posi- 
tion. Three years ago when the first open air classes 
were started, it assumed financial responsibility for 
119 



lunch for children in those classes, and later, when 
special provision was made for crippled and blind 
children, it included them. In so doing the Board of 
Education was far in advance of most school boards 
which do not recognize the necessity on the part of 
the school to care adequately for all children for 
whom it has assumed a particular obligation. Plenty 
of nourishing food is an essential in the treatment of 
open air and undernourished children. Blind and 
crippled children cannot go home at noon, so some 
provision must be made for them at school. 

The Board of Education recognizes and meets its 
obligations with regard to exceptional children. So 
far it has not realized its responsibility towards all 
children nor appreciated the opportunity here offered 
through the every day demonstration at the school 
lunch counters to strengthen its teaching with regard 
to the hygiene of daily living in which diet plays so 
important a part. 



Present Situation in Cleveland 
In Cleveland there are 12 schools with special classes 
for crippled, blind, or open air children. These 
classes receive meals at school. At noon blind chil- 
dren get milk or cocoa; crippled children get milk or 
cocoa, soup, or meat and potatoes, bread spread with 
jam or jelly, and fruit or cookies. Open air children 
have recess lunch both morning and afternoon, and 
those children, who for one reason or another cannot 
go home at noon, get a midday meal. 
120 




w 



On the recommendation of principal and medical 
inspector, undernourished children who do not belong 
to any of these groups receive breakfast and one or 
more additional meals for an indefinite period, de- 
pending upon their physical condition, but they are 
exceptions. These children pay a penny apiece for 
lunch and the deficit on each meal is made up by 
voluntary contributions. 

On December 6, 1909, the Philanthropy Commit- 
tee of the Cleveland Federation of Women's Clubs 
began this work with just 19 children. The purpose, 
as given in the minutes of the Committee, was "to 
provide breakfasts for anaemic and undernourished 
children at Eagle School, with this proviso, that the 
Board of Education sanction and cooperate in the 
undertaking." 

One school had breakfasts in 1909. The following 
year service was extended to Rockwell, and at the 
present time meals are provided for all special classes 
in grade schools, except at the deaf school, where the 
children bring their lunches. The attendance at 
these classes is 65 blind, 81 crippled, 225 open air 
children, and approximately 400 undernourished 
children. 

The Board of Education furnishes and equips 
lunchrooms and kitchens. For crippled and open 
air children the Philanthropy Committee of the 
Federation of Women's Clubs provides food and at 
each school employs a woman to prepare it. For the 
blind, the Society for Promoting the Interests of the 
Blind takes charge. The Committees, in consulta- 
121 



tion with principal, medical inspector, and supervisor 
of high school lunches, make out the different menus. 
The Board of Education contracts with these com- 
mittees to furnish meals to exceptional children in 
specified schools at so much per child per day, ac- 
cording to the kind and number of meals supplied. 



School Meals as Supplements or Substitutes 
for Home Meals 

At first glance the tangle, presented by these various 
groups of children receiving different kinds of lunch, 
seems too complicated for any one but a dietitian to 
grasp. It can, however, be resolved into order by a 
very simple classification. 

These lunches are of just two kinds: those which 
supplement a home meal, and those which take the 
place of one. Here in a nutshell is the main feeding 
problem which confronts every school lunch service, 
and, from the dietitian's point of view, the final 
criterion for judging the success or failure of such a 
department. 

Lunches which supplement the family dietary pre- 
sent the simpler feeding problem and are cheaper 
to provide. They make no pretense of doing any- 
thing more than give children a little wholesome food 
when they want it, and when it is good for them to 
have it. Three or four crackers; a cup of milk, cocoa, 
or soup; an apple, an orange, or a few dates answer 
every purpose of this type of lunch and satisfy the 
children. A cent or two will buy all that the average 
122 



child needs, and if the department is sufficiently- 
large and well organized the child's pennies will pay 
the cost of both food and service. Recess lunches in 
Cleveland and throughout the country generally fall 
into this category of supplemental feeding. 

Meals which take the place of home meals present 
more difficulties. Here again are two kinds. The 
first takes the place of breakfast, and very occasion- 
ally, of a light luncheon. More and more in America, 
as in most foreign households, breakfast is an unpre- 
tentious meal. Fruit, cereal with top milk, toast, and 
perhaps an egg, make a good combination for the 
school child. When necessary, the school lunch de- 
partment can readily provide such a meal, (substitut- 
ing for the costly egg an extra piece of toast, or more 
cereal and milk) and still have the cost fall within 
a three or five cent limit. With slight variations in 
the menu, the same thing holds true for the light 
luncheon. 

The important problem of ways and means is pre- 
sented by the dinner. For many people noon dinner 
is the main meal of the day, and must furnish not only 
high fuel value, but also the greater part of a day's re- 
quirements of protein and of inorganic salts, and the 
whole in bulky enough form to keep the digestive tract 
in good condition. This is the crux of the situation 
and school lunch departments are gradually coming to 
see that it is so, and to plan their work accordingly. 
Sometimes the service has to provide the entire meal, 
at other times to supplement a lunch brought from 
home, but either way the problem is to insure the 
123 



child's getting a dinner which measures up to the 
standard set forth above. To do this requires con- 
siderable ingenuity, careful consideration of condi- 
tions as they exist in different schools, and an organi- 
zation elastic enough to take them into account in 
its planning. Such a type of organization is costly. 
Only an experienced dietitian will be able to find a 
cheap and palatable, easy-to-prepare, dietetically 
"just as good" substitute for bacon and eggs, or 
fresh peas and new potatoes with porterhouse steak. 
However, it can be done, and no lower standard of 
achievement should be accepted. 

Kinds of Lunches and by Whom Provided 
Lunches to supplement home meals, and lunches to 
take the place of home meals are served to certain 
of Cleveland's elementary school children. Food 
plays an important part in the treatment of children 
in open air classes and is given to supplement the 
home dietary. These children receive two lunches a 
day: one at 10 o'clock, the other at two. They go 
home at noon. 

Menus are alike in all schools and the list from 
which morning and afternoon lunches are chosen is 
the same. Lunch consists of milk, or cocoa, or soup 
with crackers, or bread spread with jelly, jam, or 
peanut butter. Such a lunch is good for children; 
they like it; and it measures up to the standard. 

The minimum fuel value for the two meals is 390 
calories of the kind of food specified in the contract 
between the Board of Education and the Philan- 
124 



thropy Committee. It costs eight cents per child 
per day. The unprepared food material costs on an 
average not more than a cent for 130 calories, which 
divides the cost of meals into three cents for food and 
five cents for service. 

Blind children stay in school all day, so provision 
must be made for their midday meal, which for many 
is the main meal of the day. The school provides 
soup or cocoa, and the rest of their dinner children 
bring from home. 

In its contract the Board of Education specifies the 
minimum fuel value (100 calories) per portion, but 
it does not specify the kind of hot dish, nor the 
amount of protein to a portion. One-half cup of 
cocoa, or of bean soup would satisfy the contract 
as it now stands. As a matter of fact, the committee 
gives these children from 200 to 250 calories per por- 
tion instead of 100. The price paid by the Board is 
four cents per portion. The ingredients used cost 
about three-fourths of a cent per 100 calories. 

In point of fuel value the food which these children 
are actually receiving is probably adequate, or nearly 
so. The hot dish contributes from 200 to 250 calo- 
ries, and their sandwiches and fruit or cake 300 to 
400 more. Such a meal, however, has several serious 
drawbacks. It becomes monotonous and children 
lose appetite ; further, it is doubtful if it always meets 
the other specifications for a well-balanced midday 
meal for children. These are: at least one-half of 
the day's requirements of protein and a large propor- 
tion of those of inorganic salts, all combined in such 
125 



form as to furnish sufficient bulk to keep the digestive 
tract in good condition. 

It is barely possible that such a meal could be pro- 
vided at little, if any, increased cost to the school, 
but to do so would require careful planning and 
supervision, and such supervision is not possible 
under the present system of divided control and 
responsibility. 

Crippled children cannot make two trips back and 
forth a day. In consequence, they, too, have dinner 
at school, but they get a regular meal consisting of 
bread and jam and a hot dish, such as beef stew, 
minced meat with potatoes, thick soup, or macaroni 
with tomato sauce. A few, on order from the medical 
inspector, get milk in the morning. The contract 
calls for 300 calories per meal, but children receive 
about 500. This is a more appetizing meal than the 
blind children have, but it falls short of the stand- 
ard in amount of protein, salts, etc., in the same 
way as do the dinners for those children. Twelve 
cents is set aside for each of these meals, and even 
allowing for the extra service required by them this 
amount should be nearly sufficient to provide an 
adequate meal. 

Children for whom food is provided are in small 
and widely separated groups; for this reason service 
charges are high. The only way to reduce these 
charges to any appreciable degree would be by intro- 
ducing a recess lunch service into all schools where 
special meals are now being served. Such a plan is 
discussed further on. 

126 



Meals as described are paid for by the Board of 
Education and served to crippled and open air chil- 
dren by the Philanthropy Committee of the Cleve- 
land Federation of Women's Clubs; for blind (begin- 
ning February, 1915) by the Society for Promoting 
the Interest of the Blind. The cost to the Board of 
Education for lunches of these various groups of 
children for 1914-1915 is given in Tables 1, 2, and 3. 



TABLE 1.— COST TO CLEVELAND BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR 


TWO LUNCHES A DAY FOR OPEN AIR CHILDREN 




£ 


Children in open air 








oi 




classes at 










"3 








Total 


Cost at 


1914-1915 












eight 




J5 




•s 


f? 


TJ 


a 




cents 




a 


If 
W 


4 




3 
o 


1 




per day 


September 


8 


102 


25 


28 


27 


25 


207 


$132.48 


October 


21 


115 


25 


29 


25 


27 


221 


371.28 


November 


18 


120 


25 


25 


30 


27 


227 


326.88 


December 


17 


120 


29 


25 


30 


27 


231 


314.16 


January 


20 


118 


29 


26 


25 


27 


225 


360.00 


February 


19 


117 


30 


27 


30 


25 


229 


348.08 


March 


20 


120 


28 


27 


27 


25 


227 


363.20 


April 


20 


120 


28 


27 


27 


27 


229 


366.40 


May 


20 


120 


25 


27 


27 


28 


227 


363.20 


June 


14 


120 


30 


25 


25 


25 


225 


252.00 


Total 


177 


1,172 


274 


266 


273 


263 


2,248 


$3,197.68 



The Philanthropy Committee, in addition to its 
other work, furnishes breakfasts and "penny" 
lunches in certain schools. At Murray Hill and Rock- 
well they serve breakfast, at St. Clair dinner, and 
at Eagle both breakfast and noon lunch. Accurate 
figures giving the number of children in different 
127 



schools receiving meals could not be obtained, but 
the report of the Committee, May, 1915, states that 
"710 children are being cared for daily, 400 of whom 
receive breakfast." This figure included a number 
of children who went to East End Neighborhood 
House for their dinner. 



TABLE 2.— COST TO CLEVELAND BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR 
ONE HOT DISH AT NOON FOR BLIND CHILDREN 





Portions served per month at 














Cost at 
















Total 


1915 


a 
o 


a 

o 


$ 




w> 


j>> 


por- 


cents per 




00 
XI 

< 


a 
w 


a 


1 




> 


tions 


portion 


February 


56 


12 




40 




24 


132 


$5.28 


March 


260 


255 




270 


144 


110 


1,039 


41.56 


April 


264 


242 


220 


251 


220 


220 


1,417 


56.68 


May 


251 


180 


190 


305 


190 


200 


1,316 


52.64 


June 


166 


156 


140 


210 


130 


130 


932 


37.28 


Total 


997 


845 


550 


1,076 


684 


684 


4,836 


$193.44 



Breakfast consists of cereal with milk and sugar, 
cocoa, or soup, and bread and jam, and is provided 
free of charge by the Committee. It is for anaemic 
and undernourished children who are selected by the 
medical inspector and the principal. A few of the 
open air children at Eagle and Murray Hill have 
breakfast. 

Dinner consists of a hot dish, soup, macaroni with 
cheese or tomato sauce, or meat and potato, and 
bread and jelly. It is open to the same criticism as 
the other dinners described. The children who re- 

128 



ceive it are anaemic and undernourished and are 
selected by the principal and medical inspector. 

A few open air children at Eagle School who live 
out of the district and too far away to go home at 
noon are allowed for this reason to get their dinner 
at school. They pay a penny apiece. 



TABLE 3.— COST TO CLEVELAND BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR 
NOON MEAL FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN AT WILLSON 
SCHOOL 





Number 


Number of 


Cost at 12 cents 


1914-1915 


of days 


children 


per day per child 


September 


13 


72 


$112.32 


October 


21 


80 


201.60 


November 


18 


81 


174.96 


December 


17 


83 


169.32 


January 


20 


82 


196.80 


February 


19 


83 


189.24 


March 


20 


86 


206.40 


April 


20 


85 


204.00 


May 


20 


75 


180.00 


June 


14 


85 


142.80 


Total 


182 


812 


$1,777.44 



Lunchrooms and Preparation of Food 
For blind children, cooking, serving, and dishwashing 
are done in classrooms except at Addison and Mill 
where other rooms are utilized. At Harmon and 
Waring, children are big enough and can see well 
enough to prepare and serve the meal. At Addison, 
Mill, and Waverley, a woman is paid 50 cents a day 
to do the work, and at Kennard one of the senior 
students in trade cookery at East Technical does it. 
She receives the same wage as the others. At the 
9 129 



Willson School for Cripples food is prepared in a 
small kitchen and served in a room used as a class- 
room. 

The cook takes entire charge and does all work ex- 
cept at dinner time when she has two assistants to 
help with the serving. She works on an average five 
hours per day and receives $7.50 per week. The as- 
sistants work six hours per day and each receives 
$5 per week. Except for serving, their work is un- 
connected with the lunchroom. Two dollars and a 
half per week for each is a fair charge against the 
lunch service. 

At Warren, St. Clair, and Mound, where open air 
classes are in "portables" in the school yard, lunch 
is prepared and served in the classrooms. At Eagle, 
open air children are on the roof and kitchens and 
lunch rooms are up there, as they will be in the new 
Murray Hill Annex. 

Gay pictures, fresh curtains, sunshine, and grow- 
ing things in pots, with underneath the cleanliness 
of soap, water, and fresh paint are first impressions 
of these rooms. They are distinctly pleasant places 
in which to linger, especially when rows of hungry 
children are seated at the long tables. The children 
fare well, so well that it seems a pity that these rooms 
are for exceptional children only. Because of limited 
finances and lack of space normal children are not 
invited. 

Two organizations, under conditions which call 
for school cooperation, are doing work for which the 
Board of Education pays. This divides responsibility 
130 



and largely leaves the individual cooks to manage 
their own schools. 

The Philanthropy Committee sends to the school 
such supplies as can be accommodated and renews 
the stock as it gets low. Individuals, guilds, and busi- 
ness houses contribute jellies, jams, dry groceries, 
crackers, and cookies, in some cases through the Com- 
mittee, in others direct to the school. Cooks use 
whatever comes their way, but the Committee some- 
times does not know of the donation until some time 
after it is exhausted. So long as the food is ready on 
time and children like it, the cooks do pretty much 
as they please, for the supervision is for product ob- 
tained, not method employed. 

Since standard recipes are not used, dishes vary 
from school to school, but the food is generally well 
cooked, and children eat all that is given them. Often 
they ask for more, which they get until the supply is 
exhausted. All food prepared is eaten, but the system 
is costly. If meals were more carefully planned and 
work more critically supervised, as good results 
could be secured for less effort and money. 



Food Natural Need of All Children 
No one teaches children to spend their pennies for 
things to eat; given a penny, they do it quite spon- 
taneously. The school lunch recognizes this natural 
demand for food which all children make and pur- 
poses using it for their advantage. 

In New York and Philadelphia, street vendors 
131 



try hard for this trade, and in schools which have no 
lunch service, do a thriving business. In Cleveland 
vendors are not allowed in or near school yards, but 
small shops take their place in getting pennies. Man- 
ufacturers vie with one another for this business and 
turn out an ingenious and varied assortment of 
" penny " goods to attract trade. The rapid increase 
in kind and number of slot machines alone shows that 
it pays well. 

The morning recess provides a good opportunity 
for children to get food when they want it at a time 
when it is good for them. For one reason or another, 
— such as no appetite, late rising, no one to oversee 
them, — many children start the day on an insuffi- 
cient or improper breakfast or none at all. By 10 
o'clock they are hungry and ready to eat substantial 
food. If they know they can get lunch at school, they 
will save their pennies and buy it, otherwise they 
patronize small shops, vendors, or slot machines on 
the way to and from school. 

Then, too, children who have had a good breakfast 
at home are hungry by 10 o'clock and welcome a light 
lunch. It takes the edge off their appetites, keeps 
them from getting so restless in the long hour from 11 
to 12, relieves the strain on the teacher, and enables 
her to use that period to greater advantage. 



School Lunch or Street Lunch 

It is not for the school to permit children to get 

food at home or go without. The children have al- 

132 




Lunches for children, — the street kind versus the school kind 



ready decided that question. They want food and 
have money to buy it. The school cannot prevent 
their doing so, but it can control the kind and quality 
of food they get and the circumstances under which 
they get it. 

The street lunch is of cheap material, high priced. 
It is selected, not to meet the special needs of grow- 
ing children, but for profit. It is exposed to dust and 
dirt, kept under unstandardized and often unsanitary 
conditions, and handled by careless people. Every 
time they buy it, children get wrong impressions 
about what constitutes food and how much and how 
good food a nickel or a penny will buy. 

When the school serves lunch, it provides at fair 
prices a wide variety of wholesome food, especially 
adapted to children's needs. The meal is prepared 
and served under sanitary conditions by skilled 
people. Day by day the lunchroom drives home 
certain useful impressions, such as, "Cost varies ac- 
cording to what you buy;" "The most 'filling' thing 
you can get for a penny is rice pudding or graham 
crackers;" "When you are cold and hungry, hot 
bean soup is a lot better than a pickle or three laven- 
dar gum drops;" "Somebody must pay for break- 
age, service, and wasted food;" "Cost depends on 
what you get for the money." 

Children are conservative shoppers and not easily 
tempted by new dishes. The chap, who, with one 
cent deeply deposited in some obscure pocket, wants 
bean soup, is not to be beguiled by macaroni and 
tomato sauce which he knows only by reputation. 
133 



He loiters down the counter till he finds something 
which looks familiar and buys that. 

Economic stress at home shows up very plainly at 
lunch time and affects both the kind of food chosen 
and the amount spent. Unemployment struck Phila- 
delphia hard in the winter of 1914-15. Children who 
generally had two pennies to spend for lunch had 
one, or there was one to the family, and how to get 
the most for that penny was most carefully con- 
sidered. Average receipts per school dropped, but 
sales of hot dishes, soup, cocoa, succotash, increased. 
The demand for sweet chocolate, stick candy, and 
peanuts fell off; but graham crackers, milk lunch 
crackers, and pretzels more than held their own. 

Teaching children to eat nutritious food is good, 
but teaching them to buy it is much better. Polish 
children in Philadelphia will consume large quanti- 
ties of corn-meal mush with milk when it is given to 
them, but when it is offered for sale they buy candy 
instead. This is one of the weak points about free 
feeding, for exceptional children who get free meals 
are taught to eat what is set before them, not to de- 
mand and buy wholesome food only. 

The school cannot prevent normal children from 
buying lunch and at the same time forming concep- 
tions about food and food values, but it can direct 
this buying and insure their forming rational stan- 
dards of food values. When children get wholesome 
food in school and sane habits of buying it which 
carry over after they leave school, the lunch service 
has accomplished one important part of its work. 
134 



Food Clinics 
Public schools exist for all children, and all chil- 
dren must attend school. This places upon the school 
the burden of caring for all alike. The exceptional 
child must be especially provided for at meal time 
because he is blind or crippled and cannot go home 
for dinner; the open air or under-nourished child, 
because his parents are too ignorant or too poor to 
provide a sufficient amount of proper food for him. 

These under-nourished children are a menace, not 
only to themselves but to all other children. When 
they are exposed to contagious disease, they suc- 
cumb almost immediately, and in proportion as they 
are under-nourished. The remedy is simple. Food 
of the right kind in sufficient amounts is largely the 
treatment for malnutrition. 

Provision for exceptional children is neither diffi- 
cult nor costly when a lunch service is already organ- 
ized. Blind and crippled children require the same 
kind of food as do any others, but need additional 
service, — an extra meal, or one served separately. 
Likewise open air and under-nourished children do 
not require a special diet. They need more food at 
shorter intervals with greater emphasis on certain 
kinds. " Special feeding" cases, which occur infre- 
quently, call in large measure for specified quantities 
of foods which are on the regular menu, or which can 
easily be obtained. 



135 



Medical Inspection Cooperation Desirable 
Food clinics offer an opportunity for cooperation 
between the school lunch department and school 
doctors and nurses. The lunch department may make 
itself felt in the home through a new channel. Doctors 
and nurses have won the confidence of the parents 
through service rendered. They are giving instruc- 
tions about various health needs of children. The 
lunch department can help here. It can work out the 
daily or weekly diet of children in relation to age, 
family tastes, standards, and amount to be spent. 
It can help with advice and suggestions regarding 
" special feeding" cases and, if necessary, provide 
recipes and show mothers how to prepare various 
new and unknown dishes. 



Lunch Service a Big Business 
At first glance it seems hardly worth while to give 
much time and thought to what children do with 
their pennies, but their spendings amount to an 
enormous sum each year. Table 4 shows what chil- 
dren spend for their lunches in other cities. 



table 4. 



-WHAT CHILDREN IN OTHER CITIES SPENT AT 
SCHOOL IN 1914-15 



City 


Number 
of schools 


Number of 

children in 

schools 


Total 
receipts 


Average 
annual ex- 
penditure 
per child in 
school 


New York 
Buffalo 
Cincinnati 
Columbus 


19 
16 
14 

4 


27,500 

1,500 

600 

1,269 


$14,810 

2,261 

1,260 

723 


$0.54 

1.51 

2.10 

.57 



136 



For Cleveland there are no figures available, as the 
city provides lunch for exceptional children only, 
and the majority of them are fed free. But children 
here are like city children elsewhere. They spend 
money for lunch and, where no other provision is 
made, buy it at the small store. As a rule small shop- 
keepers are opposed to school meals for it interferes 
with their trade. Because it was cutting into the 
trade of a nearby store there is an injunction (by 
agreement) against one of the Cleveland high schools 
to prevent its lunchroom from selling more than one 
plate of ice cream to a child. Candy may not be sold 
either, though chocolate is counted a food and al- 
lowed because of its high food value. Yet sugar in 
candy is food and one which is very necessary to 
health. Children all crave sweets and will have them. 
To meet this demand, the lunchroom was providing 
a good grade at a moderate price. It was forced to 
close out its stock and stand by while students pur- 
chased no better but more expensive kinds down the 
street. Ice cream is a wholesome food, much better 
for growing children than pie; the injunction per- 
mits only one five cent plate of cream to a child, but 
raises no question as to the amount of pie he may get. 

On the other hand, reliable manufacturers wel- 
come school lunch service for it meets and standard- 
izes a profitable but unstable trade. This centraliza- 
tion makes the trade bulk larger and gives it an in- 
creased advertising value which manufacturers are 
quick to recognize. 

Lunchrooms are already equipped in a number of 
137 



elementary schools. At little additional expense they 
could be utilized by all children in those schools. 
These children have pennies; they are spending 
them, but will not get their money's worth until the 
school provides lunch service for them. 



Consolidated Lunch Service 
At the present time the Board of Education is pay- 
ing for meals for children in special classes. These 
meals are provided by the Philanthropy Committee 
of the Cleveland Federation of Women's Clubs and 
the Society for Promoting the Interests of the Blind. 
Responsibility of the service is divided between the 
two committees and the division of medical inspec- 
tion. High school lunches are served by individual 
concessionnaires at the various schools, under the 
supervision of the division of medical inspection. 

Elementary and secondary school lunches should 
be under one division, although considered separately 
in regard to menus, price, size of portions, and 
methods of service. They should have uniform direc- 
tion, uniform standards, and a central buying and 
accounting system to make possible a comparison 
of costs and results and to insure in both the carry- 
ing out of a sequential and constructive plan of 
work. 

The purpose and general program of lunch service 
for grade and secondary schools are much the same. 
They differ most in details of administration, and of 
the two the elementary service is by far the more 

138 



difficult to handle satisfactorily. In Cleveland the 
population in the 100 grade schools is nine times as 
great as in the 12 high schools. The children are 
younger. They have less money to spend than do 
older children and they are more influenced by 
seasons and the weather. 

Children as well as grown-ups have marked tastes 
and individual preferences, so that whoever is re- 
sponsible for elementary school lunches has to be 
continually on the alert if the pupils are to get their 
money's worth of food they like which measures up 
to the standard. 

Summary 
1. This report is based on visits made to each of the 
various types of school where lunch is served; on 
interviews at the schools with principals, class 
teachers, and cooks; on careful study of minutes 
of the Board of Education which relate to elementary 
lunch service since its beginning in 1909; on study 
of all available material issued by the Federated 
Clubs; and on conferences with the chairman of 
the Philanthropy Committee, the superintendent of 
lunches, the director of medical inspection, the 
school architect, supervisor of requisitions and sup- 
plies, and the director of schools. 

2. There are two viewpoints regarding school feed- 
ing: the one, Cleveland's, that it is a duty imposed 
upon the school by the particular needs of a partic- 
ular group; the other, that school lunches meet a 
natural need of all children, normal and exceptional, 
139 



and afford at the same time an opportunity to teach 
them to choose wisely the food they buy. 

3. School lunches are of two kinds: those which 
supplement the home dietary, and those which take 
the place of meals at home. Recess lunches generally 
fall into the former class, noon lunches into the latter. 
Recess lunches present the simpler feeding problem 
and are cheaper to provide. Noon lunches are much 
more complex. 

4. Cleveland is far in advance of most cities in 
providing lunches, served under sanitary conditions, 
for all members of classes for blind, crippled, and open 
air children. 

5. The Board of Education pays for meals which 
the Philanthropy Committee of the Federation of 
Women's Clubs and the Society for Promoting the 
Interests of the Blind provide. Responsibility for 
details of work is divided among the two organiza- 
tions, the principals, and the supervisor of high school 
lunches. Food is wholesome and plentiful, but not 
uniform in quality. It is prepared by women engaged 
by the two organizations. They use their judgment 
regarding recipes, methods of preparation, and re- 
sults to be obtained. 

6. Cleveland's lunch service is costly because: 

a. Lunch is served to exceptional children only, 
in small and widely scattered groups. 

b. Authority and responsibility for the service 
are divided, making impossible any definite 
and centralized contracts or planning. 

7. The school exists for all children and must care 

140 



for all. Food is a natural need of all children. Morn- 
ing recess provides a good opportunity for all children 
to get food when they want it at a time when it is 
good for them. Through food clinics it can care for 
under-nourished children who are a menace, not 
only to themselves, but to all other children. Food is 
the treatment for malnutrition. 

8. Children spend money for food. Given the op- 
portunity, they will spend it at school for whole- 
some food, otherwise on the street. The street lunch 
is of cheap material priced high. Every time they 
buy it, children get wrong impressions about what 
constitutes food and how much good food a penny or 
a nickel will buy. 

9. The annual food expenditure of children is very 
great. 

In June, 1915, Cleveland had 77,833 children in 
her public elementary schools. Judging from other 
cities, each one of these children spends about $1.50 
for food each school year, or a total of approximately 
$116,750 per school year. 

10. The Philanthropy Committee of the Cleve- 
land Federation of Women's Clubs has rendered a 
public service. It began its work in 1909 with the 
avowed purpose of pointing out the need for a lunch 
service for exceptional children, and of showing how 
such a service could be administered. 

11. The Committee has successfully accomplished 
its purpose. It should now be relieved from further 
responsibility for the lunch service. The function of 
a private organization is to experiment and demon- 

141 



strate. It cannot eventuate on a large scale, and it 
should not if it could. The function of a public or- 
ganization is to eventuate on a large scale. It can 
seldom experiment and it lacks freedom and flexi- 
bility in demonstration. The time has come for 
Cleveland to eventuate on a large scale. 

12. To organize lunches throughout the elementary 
schools would require no great outlay beyond initial 
equipment, since with proper management the busi- 
ness will be big enough to pay its own way, particu- 
larly if it is combined with the high school lunch 
service. The latter is organized on a large scale; the 
elementary service is partially organized; the two 
should be centralized and consolidated. The advan- 
tages of such a plan are discussed in the following 
chapter on high school lunches. 



142 



CHAPTER VII 

HIGH SCHOOL LUNCH SERVICE 

Lunch at school offers a natural opportunity for 
students to get better acquainted with others in differ- 
ent sections and years, and to meet teachers outside 
the classroom. Here American and foreign children 
alike may learn social customs without embarrass- 
ment. Children of the rich are often sent to private 
schools where much emphasis is laid on training given 
in social usage at table. Poise and a gracious manner, 
real assets at home or at work, come only after long 
familiarity with the amenities of life. A school meal 
can contribute a part to this needed training of the 
young people in our public schools. 

The school can control the kind, quality, and cost 
of food sold and service given. It can make this busi- 
ness, supported entirely by students' money, an edu- 
cational opportunity for every child in school by so 
planning the service that it becomes a practice course 
in spending. 

The educational program is based on the fact that 

everyone needs to know the relation of wholesome 

food to health, and of health to efficient living; the 

value to the body of various foods for repair and 

143 



building of tissue or doing work; how soon and how 
quickly foods can be digested and utilized. To be of 
value, this knowledge must be used and the lunch- 
room is a fine place to try it out. Here children can 
form sane habits of eating. It is not enough for them 
to like wholesome food; they must learn to buy it 
and eat it, whether in school or out. 

Every time any one buys an article, he gets an 
idea about it in terms of its cost and use, its value, 
and quality. Manufacturers all know the worth of 
this repeated impression. They spend much money 
and take great pains to tell in persuasive and con- 
vincing tones how cheap and useful, valuable and 
fine, their product is. They hunt up special names to 
help them sell their wares. They register names, 
brands, and trade marks because their money value 
is so great. In many cities manufacturers and jobbers 
alike are now competing for school lunch business 
which is already big and steadily growing bigger. 

But children not only spend money; they intro- 
duce into their homes new goods which they like. 
This makes of every child an advertising agent and 
from the manufacturer's point of view this is most 
desirable. It is also desirable from the school point 
of view if the school has planned and organized its 
lunch to this end. The street business, too, is a real 
one and it gives children ideas about what consti- 
tutes food, what it costs, and what the return is, but 
the ideas often are wrong and the food, even if harm- 
less, is high priced. 



144 




B 

o 

o 
m 

H 
+^> 

CO 



School Lunches Not New in Cleveland 
For 16 years before 1909 there was haphazard pro- 
vision for Cleveland high school students at lunch 
time. Lunch wagons went to the school, or near-by- 
stores served hot meals. In addition, several prin- 
cipals made arrangements with caterers to serve 
basket lunches on the premises. In 1909 the board of 
high school principals, backed by the superintendent 
of schools, asked for a longer school session and a 45 
minute lunch period. The board considered the 
matter but decided that "owing to lack of adequate 
dining room facilities in the high schools, it is inad- 
visable to make any changes at this time in the pres- 
ent high school sessions." 

A short time later the school architect reported, 
"Arrangements for lunch facilities are feasible at 
East, West, South, Lincoln, and Glenville high 
schools, involving no special changes in architecture 
except at South and Glenville High," and that same 
summer lunchrooms were installed in the schools 
mentioned and at Normal School and the High 
School of Commerce. At East Technical High School 
a lunchroom had been equipped the preceding year, 
but at Central, because of its size and lack of ade- 
quate space, it was deemed inadvisable to install the 
service. From its opening in 1911, until 1914, West 
Technical ran its own lunchroom; in 1914 this lunch- 
room was incorporated into the regular lunch system. 

Most of these high school lunchrooms, when open- 
ed, were operated by the same people who had for- 
merly sold basket lunches. The new arrangement put 
io 145 



the salespeople under yearly contract with the Board 
of Education on the "concessionnaire" plan. In the 
contract the Board of Education agreed "to furnish 
all the necessary equipment, as well as heat, light, gas, 
and water, sufficient for the proper maintenance 
of the lunchrooms, " and "to replace all equipment 
rendered useless through natural wear and tear." 

The concessionnaire agreed to "replace or pay for 
all equipment lost or destroyed in any manner other 
than through natural wear and tear; to furnish food 
of a quality approved by the supervisor of high school 
luncheon rooms; and to sell the same in accordance 
with the uniform scale of prices approved by the said 
supervisor of high school luncheon rooms ; and to re- 
port each week to the said supervisor the total re- 
ceipts, total expenditures, the total number fed, and 
total number employed." 

The contract is terminable "at the will of either 
party upon 30 days' notice." 



Two Distinct Policies with Regard to School 
Lunch Service 

Cleveland's method is one of several ways which 
school boards in the United States have worked out 
for dealing with the high school lunch problem. These 
methods may be classified in two distinct groups. In 
the first case, the lunchroom is run to benefit those 
who serve lunch. In the second case, it is organized 
and run to benefit those who buy lunch. 

Cleveland's place is in the first group, for although 
146 



lunchrooms were equipped by the Board and are 
supervised by a supervisor of lunches who ranks as 
assistant in the division of medical inspection, an 
important factor in determining the quality, quantity 
and price of food sold is still a steady profit for the 
concessionnaire. This plan is followed in many other 
cities, for example, New York, where, at Wadleigh 
High School, a student organization runs the lunch 
and receives the profit from it; or at Washington 
Irving High School, which, — counters and tables ex- 
cepted, — a caterer equipped and runs at a profit. 
In the second group are cities such as Boston, 
where the Women's Industrial and Educational 
Union partially equipped the lunchrooms and runs 
them at cost with the expectation of eventually turn- 
ing them over to the school system; or Philadelphia, 
where the Board of Education employs a Superin- 
tendent of Lunches to organize and provide meals at 
cost. Rochester, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo follow simi- 
lar plans. It is obvious that if the main purpose of 
the lunchroom is to give children good food at low 
cost, this plan is the better. 



Extent of Service in Cleveland 
In 1914-1915 lunch service was provided for the 
Normal School and all high schools except two, Col- 
lingwood and Central. The average daily attendance 
in the normal and high schools was 8,043, and of those 
students 6,715 or 84 per cent were given lunchroom 
facilities. The total business done was $36,777. This 

147 



year, 1915-1916, a larger number of students, actu- 
ally and proportionally, will enjoy this privilege, 
since the service was extended to Central in Septem- 
ber. With this great increase in numbers served, it 
seems probable that for 1915-1916 the business will 
be close to $45,000. 



Standards for High School Meals 
The time of service for high school lunches through- 
out the country is uniform. They are served at mid- 
day and take the place of a meal which for many 
families is the main meal of the day. Every lunch 
department should take this condition into account, 
and plan so as to provide a substantial meal for chil- 
dren who miss the home dinner, as well as a light 
lunch for children who will get dinner at home in the 
evening. While this problem is not so difficult as 
that which confronts the elementary service, be- 
cause children are older and have more money to 
spend, it nevertheless calls for skilful management 
on the part of the director. The chief requirement 
for a light lunch is fuel value, but if lunch is appe- 
tizing and bulky enough to satisfy a child's hunger, 
the fuel requirement is likely to be met. 

Planning dinner is a much more difficult task. In 
the average household dinner is the meal which 
furnishes not only a large amount of the day's re- 
quirements of fuel, but also a large proportion of the 
necessary protein (which has many uses other than 
fuel value) and the greater part of the inorganic 

148 



salts — the whole in such form as to stimulate the 
digestive processes and keep the alimentary tract in 
tone. In the following discussion Cleveland's high 
school lunch service is reviewed with this general 
standard as the basis for comparison. 



Lunch Menus 
Lunch menus vary from school to school but follow 
a similar plan. At the academic and commercial 
schools the menu calls for a soup, a meat, two vege- 
tables, a salad or relish, milk, one or two sandwiches, 
bread and butter, crackers, a homemade dessert, 
pie, and often cake, ice cream, and sweet chocolate. 
The technical schools, which have a heavier program 
and a longer day, increase the variety by adding to 
the list an extra meat or meat substitute, an extra 
vegetable, and more desserts. 

There is no uniform practice with regard to menu 
display. Several schools have no menu, while in 
others it is written in a flowing hand on some incon- 
spicuous blackboard. The following is a typical 
menu in the Cleveland high schools: 



Vegetable soup 


4 cents 


Pickle 


1 


Beef stew 


6 " 


Crackers 


1 


Mashed potatoes 


4 " 


Peach tapioca 


5 


Creamed potatoes 


5 " 


Pie, apple and cocoa- 




Baked beans 


5 " 


nut custard 


5 


Beet salad 


5 " 


Orange and banana 


5 


Apple sauce 


5 " 


Ice cream 


5 


Roll and butter 


2 " 


Milk 


3 



1 cent 



149 



This menu as given offers a generous list of dishes 
from which to choose either a light lunch or a sub- 
stantial dinner, but comparison of actual menus 
and food served in different schools indicates a need 
for greater care and uniformity in the daily menu. 
In some schools the range of choice is too great, in 
others too small. In all it is uneven. Vegetable soup 
is always vegetable soup and the price is four cents; 
but price is the only constant factor, for the materials 
used vary from school to school. That is, a nickel 
will buy more food, often of better quality, in one 
school than it will in another. Attractiveness, too, 
varies throughout the system. Baked beans in little 
hot brown bean pots are appetizing. Served on a 
large, tepid, stone plate they would be quite the con- 
trary, especially if they had been dished some time 
before serving. 

Each concessionnaire has her own recipes and 
uses her own judgment as to the proportion of differ- 
ent ingredients used and the result to be obtained. 
With such a plan, a wide variation in product is to 
be expected and is found. A few schools have very 
good cooking to balance a few more where it is very 
poor. In the majority, however, it is "good enough 
if one is hungry. " Yet, so far as can be ascertained, 
concessionnaires work equally hard and are equally 
interested in their work. 

The supervisor of high school lunches has stan- 
dardized certain foods, such as ice cream, sweet choc- 
olate, and milk. The latter is now furnished in indi- 
vidual bottles by one of the best dairies in the city. 

150 



All other supplies are chosen by the individual oon- 

onnatrWj who are entirely responsible for the 

service. In a number of schools they prepare the 
food themselves, which increases their difficult]' 
they are frequently interrupted by trade-people, 
by lunchroom helpers asking question*, by stray 
students who need attention, and by teacher- on 
diet who want beef juice or an eggnog, or by other 
teachers who have a free hour and want a special 
meal. Lunch has to be prepared in between I 
demands and dishes are sometimes ready long before 
the regular lunch period. 

H hit VICE 

The technical high schools have a longer day than 
others and divide their time into nine periods, 
ranged that each student has at least one vacant 
period between 11 30 and 1 30. This time be takes 
for lunch and recreation. 

In the academic and commercial schools, students 
have 20 minutes in which to buy lunch, eat it, and 
go to and from classrooms. This is too short. The 
noon period should be long enough to enable children 
and teachers to relax, to have a quiet, restful meal, 
and to spend a few extravagant minutes as they 
please before going on with the afternoon's work. 
Industry is gradually learning the limitation, 
speeding up, and that fatigue doe- not make \<)T effi- 
ciency. In this connection the school might profit- 
ably learn a lesson from good factory practice, which 
tries in every way to lessen the strain of the wo; 

151 



When they can, principals relieve the pressure by 
allowing students who have free periods immediately 
before or after recess to buy then, but the majority 
have to be served at one time. This is difficult to do. 
Rooms are small and counters placed to save space 
rather than time. Many rooms have but one en- 
trance and students get jammed there as well as at 
the counter, but they are considerate and wait pa- 
tiently for their turn. They enjoy their common 
meal and eat it in as leisurely a manner as the time 
and space at their disposal will permit. Two 45 
minute periods with students divided into two groups 
or perhaps overlapping, more student aids to facili- 
tate service, and careful counter arrangement with 
better and uniform provision for receiving money, 
would largely correct these difficulties. 

More than time saving, however, should be con- 
sidered in arranging a lunch counter. A prominent 
position on the counter makes an article sell well. 
Students do not entirely stop buying pie because it 
has been pushed into the background and milk has 
taken its place on the counter, but they do buy more 
milk and less pie than formerly. The sale of almost 
any article can be increased if it is skilfully "fea- 
tured." The lunchroom manager should bear this in 
mind and feature new dishes like rice with creamed 
sauce which she wants to introduce, or old ones such 
as apple tapioca that are more wholesome than 
popular. 

During lunch period students help serve. They are 
selected by principal or teachers. Their period of 
152 



service is irregular, depending an how well they like 
the work and how well they do it. The conceffflon- 
naiie gives them what directions they get and usually 

they have a particular task assigned them. Require- 
ments as to neatness and clean hands vary with the 
individual concessionnaire. .Students do not have 
regular uniforms, although some girls wear aprons. 
At Commercial and West Technical boys act as 
cashiers. Both hoys and girls are on duty from 10 to 
20 minutes, and receive in return a 10 to 20 cent 
lunch. 

West Technical follows a different plan from the 
other schools. Lunchroom work there is done by 
students under direction of the concessionnaire and 
a teacher of domestic science. .Senior students in 
domestic science take care of the storeroom, do the 
Cooking, and much of the serving. Bojl are all paid 
for their service in cash or in lunches, or both. Girls 
receive lunch but no payment for their work. This 
counts as laboratory work, and is not charged up 
against the lunchroom. In addition to the ftudi 
two women are employed on full time to pn 

ables, clean the rooms, and do odd jobs gen- 
erally. 

Location a 

liable for lunchrooms and k/ 
in the various schools, but equipment is much alike, 
ago, wb 'ailed, no one realized 

great a saving of time and labor could hi 
tkrouj ' il selection and arra: : 'i'JJp- 

153 



ment. Since then we have come far in lunchroom 
management. Today each piece of equipment is con- 
sidered with a view to its purpose in an organized 
plan, and it is placed where it can be used with a 
minimum expenditure of time and energy. As Cleve- 
land's lunchroom equipment is renewed, careful 
thought should be given to effecting such economy. 

The cost of installing the service, keeping rooms in 
repair, replacing worn-out equipment and buying 
new, cannot be accurately determined, as the total 
sums spent are lost in a mass of records. When the 
rooms were equipped, the executive department 
charged expenditures against schools only, not 
against departments as well, and the same plan was 
followed in recording maintenance costs. However, 
the present administration has greatly improved the 
system of accounting and in the future such infor- 
mation will be available. 

Lunchrooms are easy of access from both school 
and street. Adjacent halls and stairways are excep- 
tionally clean and well lighted, but the space given 
is small and during the lunch period there is much 
crowding in certain of the academic and commercial 
schools due to the large number of children who must 
be served in a few minutes. The technical schools 
have more space given over to lunchrooms, as well 
as a relay plan of service. 

With one exception all lunchrooms are in the base- 
ment with kitchens and storage rooms adjoining or 
close at hand. At the High School of Commerce the 
kitchen is between two lunchrooms; at the technical 
154 




bC 



schools, adjoining; at East High and Glenville, kit- 
chen and lunchrooms are combined by pushing the 
counter further out into the room and doing the cook- 
ing behind it. At South High a large, airy, third- 
floor room is used for lunch purposes. It is the most 
attractive of all the rooms but so many flights up 
and so far away from the street, where students like 
to promenade, that many of them will not make the 
trip. 

In only a few cases is storage space adequate. In 
some schools it is so placed that it cannot well be 
used. For example, at West High, steam pipes run 
over-head and heat the room so much that food 
spoils. 

Condition and Care 
As a whole, the physical condition of lunchrooms is 
good and relation between concessionnaire and jani- 
tor unusually cooperative and harmonious. Rooms 
are swept at least once a day and are mopped up or 
scrubbed once every week or 10 days and more fre- 
quently if the weather is bad. Tables are scrubbed 
every day and wiped off before recess time. Dishes 
are very heavy and plain white. They are most un- 
attractive but they are clean and whole. 

The few waste cans in the lunchrooms catch some, 
but not all, stray papers. Students have so little time 
for lunch that they do not return soiled dishes to 
the counter except at Commercial. This clutters the 
room and makes much extra work for concession- 
naires. 

155 



Lighting 
Lunchrooms and halls are better lighted than are 
most basement rooms. Windows are cleaned fre- 
quently, outside by the janitor, inside by the con- 
cessionnaire. Electric lights are placed in dark cor- 
ners, and ceilings and upper walls are colored white or 
light gray, lower walls darker gray or tan. Kitchen 
lighting is not so good; they are gloomy, with insuffi- 
cient lights poorly placed, and cold gray cement 
floors, slippery wet in front of sink and stove. This 
semi-darkness has a depressing effect on the force. 
These dim kitchens are not only unattractive, but 
are poorly kept, floors especially. Much of the time 
the women stand at their work. Slight changes, more 
lights, slat mats, working stools, and provision for 
working clothes would make the women more com- 
fortable and increase their working efficiency. 

Ventilation 
It is difficult to ventilate the lunchrooms and there is 
no uniform plan for doing it. Most of the rooms are 
not connected with the central system, and are over- 
crowded. In wet and windy weather, rain and dust 
blow in through open windows, covering food and 
children alike. Better ventilation might be had by 
covering all food and thoroughly airing the rooms 
before and between recesses, but this plan will not 
do for the kitchens. In several, notably South High, 
the heat is almost unendurable and special mechan- 
ical ventilation should be provided. 
156 



Working Pobci 
Lunchroom attendants are employed and discharged 
by the concessionnaire. A few of them are young, 
but the majority are middle-aged women nrho sup- 
plement the family income by this work. What I rain- 
ing they have, they received in their own home 01 
from the conoeesionnaire who directs them and regu- 
lates their boure of work and rate of payment. There 
is no uniform rate per hour. The women work three 
to nine noun per day according to the needs of the 
school; the highest paid worker gete 18 a week for 
an eight-hour day. There is no policy with regard to 
payment during illness, school holidays, or summer 
vacation, /jo uniform standards for employing work- 
ers, and no system of promotion: pensions have ap- 
parently never been thought of. Jn view of the cir- 
cumstances which brought the sy tern into being, 
such lack of uniformity is natural, but the work has 
now reached a stage where a definite policy should be 

formulated. 

The school lunch department is a department of 
the public school system; but both are business 
enterprises, and should he run, like any others, on 
sound business principles. One of these is that 
industry must bear the coats of production. 'J 

include, among other-, provision for unem- 
ployment, illness, and old age pensions. The school 
has formulated such a policy with reference to its 

teachers. The Lunch department is still in proa 
making, but its workers should be taken into w - 
eOUnt and an effort made to insure for them an equal 

157 



measure of social consideration with others of the 
school's employees. 

CONCESSIONNAIRES 

When lunchrooms were established, concessionnaires 
were selling lunch at the schools and those who wished 
to continue under the new arrangement did so. With 
the exception of a colored man caterer at East High 
School, they are women of 35 and over. They have 
had no specific training for their work and invest 
their time only when they undertake it. The only 
supervision to which they are subject is that of the 
supervisor of lunches who has authority to inspect 
their work and make suggestions. She may report 
any violation of contract and can hold conferences 
with the concessionnaires for the purpose of talking 
over changes and improvements. 

TABLE 5.— PROFIT MADE BY LUNCHROOM CONCESSION- 
NAIRES IN CLEVELAND DURING 1914-15 



School 


Profit during year 


East Technical 


$942 


Lincoln 


811 


West Technical 


762 


East 


610 


Glenville 


605 


Commerce 


591 


West 


473 


South 


313 


Normal 


280 


East Commerce 


124 



Concessionnaires receive no fixed salary. At the 
end of the week they get what is left after food and 
labor bills have been paid. This amount varies from 

158 



week to week and from school to school, not only 
actually, but proportionally. One month there may 
be a very good profit; the next a large deficit. Con- 
cessionnaires are interested in and earnest about 
their work and all but one give full time. Their in- 
comes range from $124 to $942 per year, as shown in 
Table 5 for the school year 1914-15. 

Supervision 
The supervisor of high school lunchrooms is ap- 
pointed by the director of schools upon recommenda- 
tion of the director of medical inspection to whom she 
is immediately responsible. Each week she receives 
from concessionnaires signed reports covering num- 
ber of portions served, receipts, profits, and ex- 
penditures for food and service. 

She visits schools to oversee service, to confer with 
principals and concessionnaires regarding details of 
work, and to arrange a uniform food and price scale. 
She has heavy responsibility but lacks the authority 
to make her judgments active for she has only the 
power of recommendation. Any breach of contract 
must be reported to the director of medical inspec- 
tion, who transmits the report and his recommenda- 
tion to the director of schools before any action is 
taken. 

High School Lunches a Big Business 

Every year the proportion, as well as the number of 

children who go to high school, is increasing and every 

159 



year more of them depend on the school to furnish 
their noonday meal. The potential business in any 
of the larger cities is big; for the whole country it is 
enormous. 

In six other cities where service is organized high 
school students spend on an average $5 to $10 per 
school year, as indicated in Table 6 which follows: 



TABLE 6.— AVERAGE RECEIPTS PER STUDENT FOR SEVEN 
CITIES WITH SUPERVISED HIGH SCHOOL SERVICE, 1914-15 



City 


High 
schools 


Average 
daily at- 
tendance 
at school 


Total 
receipts 


Average 
receipts 
per stu- 
dent per 
year 


Boston* 
Columbus 
Pittsburghf 
Cleveland 

New York 

Philadelphia 

Rochester 


16 

5 
10 

1 

17 
2 


14,235 

755 

3,500 

6,763 

800 

14,000 

2,900 


$73,446.00 

4,078.00 

19,000.00 

36,777.00 

4,958.00 

117,000.00 

28,500.00 


$5.16 
5.40 
5.43 
5.44 
6.20 
8.36 
9.83 



* Estimated actual per capita expenditure of students who buy lunch 
Boston $10, Pittsburgh $15. 
t Estimated 1915-1916. 



A study of last year's business in Cleveland brings 
out several interesting facts. Table 7 shows how the 
average per capita expenditure for all schools is low 
as compared with four other cities, while the amount 
spent by students who do buy lunch at school in- 
dicates that they have fully as much money to spend 
as do children in other places. In this city the aver- 
age student who gets lunch at school spends 10 or 11 
cents for it. To the writer it seems probable that 
those students who patronize lunch wagons spend 
160 



about as much for their lunch as do other students 
in the same school who use the lunch counter. 



TABLE 7.— AMOUNT AND COST OF BUSINESS DONE BY CLEVE- 


LAND HIGH SCHOOL LUNCHROOMS DURING 1914-15 




Average 


Total 


Total 


Average 
receipts 


Average 


Average 




attend- 


receipts 


portions 


per stu- 


price 


service 




ance 




served 


dent per 


per por- 


cost per 




at school 






year 


tion 


portion 


Commerce 


669 


$2,973 


22,436 


$4.44 


$.133 


$.041 


East Com- 














merce 


135 


272 


2,991 


2.01 


.091 


.042 


East High 


1,016 


3,999 


35,819 


3.94 


.112 


.032 


Glenville 


800 


3,826 


54,528 


4.78 


.070 


.020 


Lincoln 


465 


4,992 


37,645 


10.74 


.133 


.036 


South 


422 


1,692 


23,674 


4.01 


.071 


.026 


West High 


516 


3,934 


52,255 


7.62 


.075 


.022 


East Techni- 














cal 


1,710 


7,423 


54,515 


4.34 


.136 


.044 


West Tech- 














nical 


800 


6,813 


61,459 


8.52 


.111 


.025 


Normal 


230 


853 


4,375 


3.71 


.195 


.068 


Total 


6,763 


$36,777 


349,697 


$5.44 


$.105 


$.029 



In the writer's opinion the present lunch wagon busi- 
ness if handled by the lunch counter would bring up 
the annual receipts of the high school service to 
almost double their present amount or to about 
$70,000 a year. 

A comparison of average daily attendance and of 
total yearly receipts shows a wide variation in busi- 
ness done in schools of about an equal daily atten- 
dance. Moreover, this variation is not between aca- 
demic and technical, nor academic and commercial 
schools, but between school and school. These differ- 
ences may arise because the academic schools have a 
ii 161 



short recess with overcrowded lunchrooms and slow 
counter service, while lunch wagons which stand in 
front of every school, are easy of access, and offer a 
change from school food. The latter is more attrac- 
tive than that which the wagons provide, but its 
variety is limited, and its preparation uncertain. 



Place of Lunch Service in the School System 
School lunches meet a natural need of all children. 
The purpose of the service is to teach children to 
choose wisely the food they buy. The conduct of 
school lunches is a business, an art, and a science. 
The department must "deliver the goods"; it must 
run smoothly and please its patrons. This done, it is 
free to consider its working standards and how to 
better them. 

The superintendent of lunches should have the 
same rank as the director of any other special di- 
vision and be compensated accordingly. She should 
be subordinate to the educational department, for 
her work bears direct relation to all health teaching 
in the schools and offers an opportunity to teach 
children the ethics and economics of spending, and 
the various factors affecting the price of school meals 
and restaurant meals. 

Lunch should be of a quality to satisfy the super- 
intendent and in quantity to tempt children. Re- 
ceipts should cover food, service, and limited main- 
tenance charges. In Cleveland, last year, the di- 
vision did a big business. In round numbers high 
162 



school and normal students spent $36,800 for 350,000 
portions. 

Except for supervision and equipment, the school 
lunch should be self-supporting. It has no resources 
but the day's receipts, and these must cover all ex- 
penses. If only for this reason, funds should be turned 
over quickly, bills discounted, "futures" ordered, 
and goods bought on a favorable market. 

The superintendent, therefore, should be consti- 
tuted a special agent in the purchasing department, 
authorized to buy necessary articles, such as equip- 
ment and supplies, and to pay bills. Her accounts 
should be audited at regular intervals and the ac- 
countant's report filed with other school accounts. 

This type of organization works well in other 
cities. In Philadelphia the superintendent of lunches 
has the same rank as the director of any other 
special division — medical inspection, physical train- 
ing, or household arts. She passes upon all initial 
equipment, renews it, buys all food, and pays the 
bills. She is subject to a special committee of the 
Board of Education and the department of superin- 
tendence. Her accounts are audited once a month 
by a public accountant whose report is filed with 
other school reports. 

The Pittsburgh system is run on the same general 
plan, while in Rochester it differs slightly. There the 
superintendent passes on all equipment, orders all 
food, and O. K.'s, but does not pay, bills. The cen- 
tral office pays them as soon as she presents them. 
Boston has a well-organized high school lunch ser- 
163 



vice managed by the Woman's Educational and In- 
dustrial Union. In New York City the School Lunch 
Committee of the Association for Improving the 
Condition of the Poor is responsible for service in 44 
elementary schools and one high school. Eventually 
these two organizations expect their respective school 
boards to assume responsibility for lunch service and 
organize it on a departmental basis. 

To realize these possibilities, the division must be 
directed by a superintendent who has business abil- 
ity, educational insight, and social vision. She must 
be able to organize, deputize, and supervise. She 
should have full authority over all details of work for 
which she is responsible and should be consulted on 
all questions concerning location and arrangement 
of rooms, and the choice, purchase, and placement of 
all equipment. She should be responsible, at least 
in part, for purchasing all food, and wholly respon- 
sible for preparing and serving it. 



School Cooperation 
In all schools principals and teachers patronize 
lunchrooms, where a table is set aside for their special 
use. They are interested in the lunches and ready to 
cooperate with the department in bettering the 
service. This interest, recognized, coordinated, and 
directed, might do much in the organization and 
maintenance of a uniform standard of service 
throughout the system. 



164 







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Greater Use of Lunchrooms Possible 
Reorganization, at no additional cost to the school 
board, would greatly increase the use of school lunch- 
rooms. They are already equipped, have regular 
customers, and do a big business. The average per 
capita receipts however are little more than half as 
great as for high school students in Philadelphia or 
Rochester, and if the high average expenditures 
for Lincoln, West High, and West Technical were 
counted out, the average per capita expenditure of 
Cleveland high school students would be $3.90 per 
year or the lowest of the seven cities listed in Table 
6. Concessionnaires are earnest and hard-working, 
but they lack the peculiar training, skill, and exper- 
ience requisite for the successful conduct of so com- 
plex a service as school lunches. Concessionnaires 
have no professional reputations at stake and no 
professional standards; they did not train for the 
special field in which they work, but are paid for their 
labor. Frequently they receive for it as much as do 
grade teachers who specialized in household arts at 
normal school or college. 

Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and 
Rochester have put trained people on good salaries in 
charge of their school lunch service and the results 
have justified the experiment. A centralized system 
of buying and accounting saves enough to cover not 
only food and labor costs at each school, but super- 
vision and other office costs. Of these cities only 
Philadelphia and Boston do as big a business as 

165 



Cleveland, but, in all, this type of organization has 
been successful and has paid its own way. 



Waste of Present System 
The present system is not economical or efficient. 
It is neither uniform nor standardized and provides 
no way of detecting and preventing waste. Buying 
is done by untrained people who follow no uniform 
system and who order in retail quantities. Their 
purchases lack uniformity and are made from so 
many firms that they can get advantageous prices 
from none. 

Storage space is inadequate, often situated where 
it cannot be used, for example, at West High, where 
hot steam pipes run over-head, or at Commercial, 
where it is so cold that goods freeze. In several 
instances ice chests are inconveniently located; so 
big that concessionnaires cannot afford to use them; 
or placed under uncovered steam pipes where melting 
ice runs away with the profit. 

Recipes are not standardized and vary from school 
to school in quality, quantity, cost of ingredients 
used, and product obtained. Although prices are 
uniform, portions of soup, of vegetables, and of meat 
vary so much in size and food value that lunch at 
some schools is much more costly than at others. 
There are few graded serving utensils to help the 
server gage accurately each helping so that serving 
such dishes as soup, mashed potatoes, or baked beans 
is neither quick nor uniform. 

166 



Equipment is not especially designed for the par- 
ticular use to which it is put, nor placed to save time 
and labor. Lunchroom helpers are not " routed" in 
their work. They waste time, get in each other's 
way, repeat work or overlook it, and hurry too much. 
On the one hand low-grade people are being paid high- 
grade wages to do low-grade work, and on the other 
too low wages are paid for certain kinds of highly 
specialized work, such as buying or recipe making. 
Concessionnaires are generally responsible for more 
kinds of work than they can do well. 

Accounting is haphazard. Schools keep their own 
accounts, and every week send the central office 
statements covering expenditures for food and labor, 
profit, receipts, and estimated portions sold. These 
records are too poorly checked to insure accuracy and 
too meager to offer any real basis for comparison with 
results obtained at other schools. 



* Economy of Consolidated Lunch Service 
A uniform method of record keeping and cost ac- 
counting would discard unessentials and throw into 
high light economy or extravagance of food and 
labor in individual schools. 

A central office can make a comparative study of 
equipment and materials, standardize them, and make 
them uniform where it is advisable to do so. It can 
compare variations in food costs, receipts, and profits 
by schools, or months, or both. It can find and avoid 
waste of food, time, and labor. It can carry on ex- 
167 



periments in different schools simultaneously, and 
utilize the findings of one for the benefit of all. It 
fixes responsibility and renders a maximum service 
at minimum cost. 

Summary 
1. This report is based on at least one visit made to 
every school during the lunch period; on interviews 
with concessionnaires and principals at all schools; 
on careful study of minutes of Board of Education 
since 1909 and of lunch records on file in the division 
of medical inspection; and on conferences with the 
supervisor of lunches, the director of medical in- 
spection, the school architect, the supervisor of 
requisitions and supplies, and the director of schools. 

2. The most progressive cities have consciously 
formulated a method of meeting the school lunch 
problem. This group includes Boston, Philadelphia, 
Columbus, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and Cleveland. 

3. In the United States high school lunchrooms 
are of two sorts — those run by concessionnaires who 
try to make them yield the largest possible personal 
profit, and those run by educational employees with 
the aim of putting extra profit back into increased 
food and better service. Cleveland's lunchrooms are 
of the first sort. 

4. Cleveland has an exceptional opportunity to 
do good work in this field. Six years ago the school 
board adopted a progressive policy regarding high 
school lunch service. It supplied all necessary equip- 
ment free of charge and three years ago appointed 

168 




b£ 

J5 



a supervisor paid by school funds. Lunch is served 
by concessionnaires who apply for the privilege; they 
give their time and receive in return all profit from 
the lunch. Last year this service was provided for 
83 per cent of Cleveland's high school students. 

5. The high school lunch service is a midday ser- 
vice and takes the place of home meals. It has a 
double task: to serve a light lunch for children whose 
main meal comes at night, and a substantial dinner 
to children who miss the family dinner by being at 
school. Cleveland performs this task in certain of 
her high schools, but in the majority the menu is 
not well enough standardized to offer daily an ac- 
ceptable noon dinner. The remedy for this condi- 
tion lies in centralization and close supervision of 
each individual school. 

6. The physical condition of lunchrooms is good 
and the relations between concessionnaires and 
custodians are cooperative and harmonious. Prin- 
cipals and teachers are interested and are ready to 
cooperate in any plan to extend and improve the 
service. Lunchroom patronage varies greatly from 
school to school. Where children are thoroughly 
satisfied with the service lunch wagons do a compara- 
tively small business. 

7. The school lunch division should reach all chil- 
dren; it should provide wholesome and nutritious 
food for them at cost, train them in sane habits of 
eating, and teach them to choose wisely what food 
they buy. In Cleveland last year 6,715 students 
spent $36,777 at school, or $5.44 apiece. In Phila- 

169 



delphia the same number spent $56,070, or $8.35 
apiece. Cleveland can equal this record and increase 
the usefulness of her plant by consolidating her sys- 
tem, and including in it service in the elementary 
schools. 

8. Administration of a consolidated system re- 
quires the service of a highly trained and experienced 
dietitian, who will be able to centralize all buying and 
accounting, organize and standardize equipment, 
service, labor, wages, and food, and combine old 
methods and originate new ones for the conduct of 
the service. 

9. Increased expenditure involved in reorganizing 
high school lunches will be met by increased profits 
from lunchrooms due to bigger business and better 
management. 

10. Cleveland's opportunity to do significant and 
constructive work through her school lunchrooms is 
exceptional. She has all the necessary equipment, but 
at present lacks the proper organization and neces- 
sary enthusiasm. One competent person with author- 
ity equal to the responsibility of the position and a 
vital interest in the work could make Cleveland a 
leader in this field. 



170 



CLEVELAND EDUCATION SURVEY REPORTS 

These reports can be secured from the Survey Committee of 
the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. They will be 
sent postpaid for 25 cents per volume with the exception 
of "Measuring the Work of the Public Schools" by Judd, 
"The Cleveland School Survey" by Ayres, and "Wage Earn- 
ing and Education" by Lutz. These three volumes will be 
sent for 50 cents each. All of these reports may be secured 
at the same rates from the Division of Education of the 
Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. 

Child Accounting in the Public Schools. — Ayres. 

Educational Extension — Perry. 

Education through Recreation — Johnson. 

Financing the Public Schools— Clark. 

Health Work in the Public Schools — Ayres. 

Household Arts and School Lunches — Boughton. 

Measuring the Work of the Public Schools — Judd. 

Overcrowded Schools and the Platoon Plan — Hart- 
well. 

School Buildings and Equipment — Ayres. 

Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children — Mit- 
chell. 

School Organization and Administration — Ayres. 

The Public Library and the Public Schools — Ayres 
and McKinnie. 

The School and the Immigrant — Miller. 

The Teaching Staff — Jessup. 

What the Schools Teach and Might Teach— Bobbitt. 

The Cleveland School Survey (Summary) — Ayres. 

Boys and Girls in Commercial Work — Stevens. 

Department Store Occupations — O'Leary. 

Dressmaking and Millinery — Bryner. 

Railroad and Street Transportation — Fleming. 

The Building Trades— Shaw. 

The Garment Trades — Bryner. 

The Metal Trades— Lutz. 

The Printing Trades — Shaw. 

Wage Earning and Education (Summary)— Lutz. 



VITA 

Alice C. Boughton was born August 5, 1885, in Philadelphia. 
She was graduated from the Stevens Bryn Mawr Preparatory 
School in 1904, and spent the following winter, 1904-05, en pen- 
sion in Vevey, Switzerland. In September, 1905, she entered 
the Normal Domestic Science Course at Drexel Institute, Phila- 
delphia, and was graduated in June, 1909, with a teaching 
diploma in domestic science. She attended the University of 
Pennsylvania (Psychology) during the summer of 1910, and 
took extension courses in Economics and Sociology in 1912-13. 
In 1913 she was matriculated at Columbia, where in June, 
1914, she received the degree of B.Sc. in Dietary Administra- 
tion (Teachers College), and in June, 1915, the degree of A.M. 
in Education (Teachers College). She registered for the de- 
gree of Doctor of Philosophy under the faculty of Political 
Science. Her major subject was in Economics, with minors 
in Sociology and History of Thought and Culture. In 1915- 
16 she received a Curtis Scholarship in Economics. 

The writer was superintendent of the Elementary School 
Lunch Service for the Starr Center Association, Philadelphia, 
from September, 1907, to June, 1910, and for the School 
Lunch Committee of the Home and School League, Phila- 
delphia, from November, 1909, to June, 1915, when the Board 
of Education officially assumed financial responsibility for the 
service and incorporated it under the high school lunch de- 
partment. She gathered the material for the first annual re- 
port of the School Lunch Committee of the Home and School 
League and wrote the second, third, and fourth annual reports 
of the Committee. She spent from May to October, 1912, 
visiting school lunch centers in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, 
Belgium, and England, for the School Lunch Committee, but 
the report on this trip was not published. 

Her dissertation was written under the direction of Pro- 
fessors Seager and Chaddock. The field work was done in 
Cleveland, May to September, 1915, while she was a member 
of the staff of the Cleveland Education Survey. 



JU124 l»io 



